I?? 
I 



THRDUG 




PN 2285 

H8 
Copy 1 



THE 



STAGE 

n 




& 
c© 





Class _£J>Ux&£- 
Book __Ji_a_ 

Copyright^ 

COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT 



1 THROUGH THE STAGE DOOR 



^ 



Stories of Actors and of I 



Stage Life 'Behind \ 

the Scenes I 



1 

HENRY M. HYDE. | 



I 
Illustrated With Photographs from Life % 

1 

1 

, » 3 O > , ^» 



k. 



Commercial Distributing Company | 

Opera House 2/ocfc | 

Cairo, Illinois ^ 

1 



r % 



Si 



COPYRIGHT, 1903, BY 
H. R. SCHUTTER 



THE LIBRARY OF 


CONGRE^fS, 


Two Copies 


Received 


JUL 1T 


1903 


Copyright 


tntry 


O^.fS 


CLASS <*- 


XX& M«, 


^ro^r/ 


COPY B. ^ 



The Publishers desire to acknowledge the courtesy 

of the "Chicago Tribune," in the columns of 

which paper ihese sketches were 

originally p/inted. 



CONTENTS. 

Page. 
How Mansfield Played to an Audience 

of One i 

Henrietta Crosman's Hard Fight for 

Success 11 

Superstitions of the Stage 22 

Philosophy of Ezra Kendall 32 

Adventures of the Theatrical Press 

Agent 48 

How E. H. Sothern Rehearses Hamlet. 56 
William Gillette — Playwright, Actor... 62 

Duse, the Mysterious 72 

William H. Crane Tells Stage Stories . . 82 

A Chicago Tragedy of Hamlet 92 

The Making of an Opera Star 103 

The Handsomest Man on the Stage 113 

How David Belasco Works and Lives . . 123 



FOREWORD. 

Stage life is interesting to most 
people who are not on the stage. 
That is the only reason for print- 
ing these sketches in book form. 
Written day by day for the columns 
of a newspaper they lack finish and 
exact accuracy. 

If the stories told of actors are 
found to be " good stories " , if they 
throw any light on that fascinating 
mystery which lies "behind the 
scenes , ' ' they have served their only 
purpose. 

Unless they may also serve to 
show, for the benefit of "stage 
struck "youngpeople, that the actor, 
like most other men, must as David 
Belasco says, "scratch his way 
through a mountain to success." 
H. M. H. 






KH'HARI) MANSFIELD. 



HOW MANSFIELD PLAYED TO AN 
AUDIENCE OF ONE. 



T happened during one of the 
long runs of "Richard III," 
in New York. Richard Mans- 
field, who has been painted by 
sensational newspapers as an ogre 
and tyrant to the members of his 
company, was, of course, in the 
title role. The part of one of the 
little princes who go later to the 
tower — the Prince of Wales — was 
played by little Margery Stevens, a 
sweet little maid of thirteen. 

Towards the close of the run 
little Margery was taken ill. Her 
mother was with her — children in 
the Mansfield company are always 
accompanied by their mothers, 
when they have mothers available. 
Margery was taken first from the 
theatrical boarding house where 
she had been living to a hospital. 
In the beginning it did not seem 
that her illness would be serious, 



2 THROUGH THE STAGE DOOR. 

and as the last day of the engage- 
ment drew near the little girl was 
broken hearted at the thought of 
being left behind. So the terrible 
tyrant, who had been almost every 
day to see her since she had been 
out of the cast, arranged to have 
her travel with the company to 
Philadelphia. Incidentally he paid 
the hospital bill and the fees of 
the attending doctor. 

When the Mansfield special 
reached Philadelphia Margery was 
taken directly to the Presbyterian 
hospital in that city. The doctors 
said that the trip had done her no 
harm. She was better off, in fact, 
than if she had been left behind 
in New York to worry and fret. 
Her mother went with her and was 
established in an adjoining room > 
where she could be near her little 
daughter. 

In some strange way, which it 
is feared some people will never 
be able to understand, little Miss 



AN AUDIENCE OF ONE. 5 

Margery had formed a great attach- 
ment for Mr. Mansfield. Instead 
of cowering into a corner and 
trembling at sight of him — as we 
have been given to understand the 
women of his company are accus- 
tomed to do — little Margery greet- 
ed him always with a pathetic little 
smile. And he came to see her 
often, every day, in fact, during 
the stay in Philadelphia, until — 
but that is another story. 

It is to be feared that Miss Mar- 
gery was something of a hero 
worshiper, which — Emerson and 
Thomas Carlyle to the contrary 
notwithstanding — is something to 
be ashamed of. At any rate, when 
Mr. Mansfield came out to the 
hospital to call every morning she 
always brightened up and smiled 
and talked gayly with him. Some- 
times, after consultation with the 
doctors, he brought some little 
trifle for her to eat. Always he 
told her how much better she was 



4 THROUGH THE STAGE DOOR. 

looking and how hard it was to 
get along without her in the cast. 
Part of that was acting, of course, 
though the plot does not begin to 
thicken and the role get really 
difficult until later — the second 
and last act. 

There seemed to be only one 
thing on little Margery's mind. 
Almost every day she spoke of it. 

"I'm sure I'm not going to get 
well in time to see you in 'Beau 
Brummel,' " she said over and 
over again. "I wanted to see that 
more than anything else, and now 
I'm going to be disappointed." 

Which was foolish of her, of 
course. But she was an actress, 
and only thirteen years old, so one 
can afford to be charitable. 

"Why, Margery," said the man 
who is reported to pull handfuls 
of hair out of coiffures he thinks 
are too large, "you'll be well and 
strong in plenty of time to see 
'Beau Brummel.' You're getting 



AN AUDIENCE OF ONE. 5 

along splendidly. You're looking 
much better than you did yester- 
day, my dear. Don't you worry 
about that. I'll promise you, on 
my word of honor, that you shall 
see 'Beau Brummel.' " 

But that was before the brute 
saw and talked with the doctors 
who were attending the little girl. 

"How soon will she be able to 
get about?" he asked. 

The doctors shook their heads. 
It was worse than a critical case, 
they said. The little girl was 
down with her last illness. 

' 'She'll never get up again," 
they said. "There isn't one 
chance in a million." 

Whereupon the villian paid a 
second call the same day on the 
little girl and basely deceived her 
by declaring that she looked the 
picture of health and that, beyond 
the shadow of a doubt, she would 
be able to see 'Beau Brummel' on 
the first night of its production in 



6 THROUGH THE STAGE DOOR. 

Philadelphia. Which was heart- 
less, of course, for he knew posi- 
tively at the time, that she would 
never get out of that little white 
room in the Presbyterian hospital. 

The days wore along. They 
went fast for the actor, with all 
that burden of deceit on his mind. 
Every hour brought him nearer to 
the time when his duplicity must 
be exposed and another added to 
the long list of stories which cir- 
culate through the newspapers and 
reveal him in his true character. 

For the little girl in the white 
hospital bed the days went slow. 
In spite of what Mr. Mansfield told 
her every morning when he called 
she seemed to have a ^ort of pre- 
monition that things were not going 
well with her. Perhaps she felt 
herself growing daily weaker. Per- 
haps she heard her mother sobbing 
softly to herself in the adjoining 
room after a consultation with the 
doctors. Almost every day she 



AN AUDIENCE OF ONE. 7 

would refer to Mansfield's promise 
that she should see him in "Beau 
Brummel." 

"I know I won't, Mr. Mans- 
field," she would say. "See how 
thin and weak and how homely I'm 
getting. I won't be up in time, 
I'm sure I won't." 

Then the villain would plunge 
headlong into a fresh tissue of lies. 

"Margery," he would say, "I 
never in my life saw you looking so 
well. Just look at the roses in your 
cheeks," holding up a hand mir- 
ror, "and talk to me about looking 
thin and homely ! ' ' The roses 
were purely imaginary, but Mar- 
gery, though she was but thirteen, 
was still a woman, and — how- 
ever, nobody can attempt to defend 
a bare faced deception of that kind. 
A little photograph of Margery got 
itself printed, and that also was 
used to aid in the deceit. It really 
was a dreadful state of affairs. It 
should have been exposed long ago. 



8 THROUGH THE STAGE DOOR. 

Finally the evening came on 
which "Beau Brummel" was to be 
presented. That morning Mr. 
Mansfield failed to call. Perhaps 
he realized that the day of reckon- 
ing had come and it was useless to 
try to keep up the game any longer. 
It was not a happy day for Mar- 
gery. She lay and mourned all 
day at the loss of all her hopes. 

Towards evening Mr. Mansfield 
came into the room, after Margery's 
mother had told her he was there 
and had propped her up in bed with 
a couple of pillows. 

4 'Yes," the doctor had said, "you 
might as well. Nothing can make 
much difference now. Do it if you 
think it will give her any pleasure . ' ' 

So Mansfield came in. It was 
a cold night out of doors and he 
wore a huge ulster which fell to his 
feet. 

"Well, Margery," he said. 

"And I'm not going to see 
4 Beau Brummel' after all," broke 



AN AUDIENCE OF ONE. y 

out the little girl. "To-night's 
the night, and I'm too sick to get 
up at all. I knew I should be." 

"But, Margery, I promised on 
my word of honor that you should 
see 'Beau Brummel.' " 

"It's not your fault, Mr. Mans- 
field, that I should be so sick. You 
can't help that." 

"Wait a minute, Margery, "said 
the actor. 

Mansfield's dresser came into the 
little room and took his great ulster 
and his hat and stick. 

Before the wondering eyes of the 
sick child, propped up in bed, 
stood the great "Beau Brummel," 
lace handkerchief, tasseled cane, 
tortoise shell snuff box, silk stock- 
ings, and all. 

From beginning to end the play 
was rehearsed, Mansfield in turn 
taking all the parts and telling the 
whole story. He finished just in time 
to drive back to the theatre and play 
the part before a crowded house. 



10 THROUGH THE STAGE DOOR. 

Iyittle Margery somehow forgave 
him for all the deception he had 
practiced on her. In fact, it did 
not seem to occur to her that she 
had been deceived or ill treated at 
all. She died before the Mansfield 
engagement in Philadelphia was 
over. 



HENRIETTA CROSMAN'S HARD 
FIGHT FOR SUCCESS. 



m 



NCE upon a time — which is 
(J always the polite way to 
speak of an incident in the 
career of an actress who is 
more than 20 — once upon a time 
Miss Henrietta Crosman — and that 
was her real name before she mar- 
ried — was called upon to decide 
between painting plaques and play- 
ing parts on the stage. The daub- 
ing of red roses and scarlet sumac 
bunches on china plates was a bird 
in the hand that was laying golden 
eggs of such size and number that 
it seemed almost foolish to give it 
up for the bird in the stage bush — 
though the latter wore more glit- 
tering plumage. 

It happened this way: 

Miss Crosman 's father was Maj. 
Crosman, U. S.A. (retired). His 
daughter was 15, and large for her 
age. She had talent in two direc- 



12 THROUGH THE STAGE DOOR. 

tions; she could paint pretty pic- 
tures and she had a fine, high 
soprano voice. So the first choice 
was between Art and Music. 

The major and her mother and 
all the rest of the family favored 
Art. The girl herself thought she 
would rather sing in grand opera 
than decorate any number of china 
tea sets . So the whole family pulled 
up stakes and departed for Paris on 
the major's half pay. There a 
famous teacher of vocal music put 
Henrietta's voice to the test, and, 
declaring that the question of his 
possible fees cut no figure in his 
decision, announced that she was 
the future Patti. So they all 
settled down in a French pension 
— which is a word you use when 
you want to show that you have 
been to Europe, and means board- 
ing house — and Henrietta went to 
school to the singing master. 

After a year's study arrangements 
were made for Jier operatic debut. 



FIGHT FOR SUCCESS. 13 

A week before the date set Miss 
Crosman caught a bad cold. The 
singing master kept right on forcing 
her to sing, and a day or two be- 
fore she was to burst upon an aston- 
ished world her voice broke down. 
Eminent throat specialists were 
called in. They did no good. The 
operatic career had to be abandoned . 
What might have been, except for 
that cold, is still a something that 
Miss Crosman doesn't like to be 
reminded of. 

Then, still on the major's half 
pay, which the singing masters and 
the throat specialists and the pen- 
sion had badly strained, the Cros- 
man family moved back to Youngs- 
town, O. 

In addition to teaching her how 
to use her voice, the singing mas- 
ter had taught the 16 year old Hen- 
rietta something about acting. So, 
when Youngstown began to pall 
after Paris, she decided she would 
try her talent on the dramatic stage. 



14 THROUGH THE STAGE DOOR. 

And, finally, she got an offer of an 
engagement with a little company 
over at Pittsburg. 

The only thing that stood in the 
way of an acceptance was the lack 
of money to buy railroad tickets 
and costumes, and to J>ay board 
while the play was in rehearsal. 
And then Miss Crosman got busy 
with her brush. That was the 
china painting age, when all over 
the country the disease was spread- 
ing, and Miss Crosman took advant- 
age of it. She decorated defense- 
less plaques and cream pitchers and 
sent them to be sold to Philadelphia, 
Pittsburg, and other art centers. 
What is more to the point, they 
did sell, and the demand was so 
great that within a comparatively 
few weeks the young artist had 
taken in enough money to pay her 
railroad fare, buy her costumes, and 
provide for her board while the play 
was under rehearsal. 

Then came the crisis. The plaque 



FIGHT FOR SUCCESS. 15 

painting game was such a profit- 
able one that it seemed a shame to 
give it up for an uncertainty. But 
the choice was made and Miss 
Crosman went to Pittsburg and the 
stage. Her success was almost im- 
mediate, and it was great. From 
Bartley Campbell's "White Slave" 
company she went to Daly's, where 
she played for the greater part of 
one season. Then Daniel Froh- 
man employed her to play good 
parts with his Lyceum company in 
such plays as "The Wife." The 
next season Daniel loaned the ser- 
vices of Miss Crosman to Brother 
Charles, who wanted her to be lead- 
ing lady in "Charles Frohman's 
Comedians." In those days both 
the Lyceum and the Comedians 
were at the height of their fame, 
and Henrietta Crosman made a 
great hit in such plays as "Glori- 
ana. ' ' Her name then was almost 
as well known on Broadway as it 
is now. 



16 THROUGH THE STAGE DOOR. 

But Miss Crosman fell ill. For 
a season or two she was not able to 
appear in any production, and when 
she finally recovered her health she 
found — what many an actor and 
actress have since found — that the 
theatre-going public had forgotton 
even her name . She had hard work 
to get an engagement of any kind. 
Again the stock company of Pitts- 
burg opened its doors to her. Then 
she went to Denver, where she still 
was playing in stock. But by this 
time she had married Maurice 
Campbell, who is still her husband 
and manager. She had already 
read and been greatly taken with 
"Mistress Nell," George Hazle- 
ton's play, and the firm of Cros- 
man & Campbell — wife and husband 
— was saving up money for its pro- 
duction. 

Finally they got together enough 
coin to make a modest little pro- 
duction. They were booking then 
through the theatrical trust. 




HENRIETTA CROSMAN. 

SEE PACE 11 



FIGHT FOR SUCCESS. 17 

The production was a go. It made 
money from the start and most of 
the money was put right back again 
into the show — better actors were 
employed and better scenery was 
painted. 

And then, when the Crosman 
company was over in Canada, the 
trust decided that it couldn't do 
any more business with Campbell 
and his star wife. Campbell had 
something like $500 in cash and 
engagements for a couple of weeks 
ahead of him. He was notified of 
the decision of the trust one after- 
noon in New York and he was 
walking up Broadway the same 
afternoon white in the face and 
decidedly down in the mouth. 

Happily — some people would say 
providentially — he ran into one of 
the Stires brothers, who controlled 
the Bijou theatre. Mr. Stires was 
also ' 'up against it. " His current 
production was ' ' a frost. ' ' For all 
that he could see his house would 



18 THROUGH THE STAGE DOOR. 

4 * have to be dark" for a couple 
of weeks. Campbell told his trou- 
bles to Stires and Stires was equally 
eloquent in return. So ''Mistress 
Nell" came to the Bijou and made 
a lot of money. All the New York 
dramatic critics came and saw and 
almost all had forgotton — if they 
ever knew — that the new star was 
really an old New York favorite. 

Mrs. Campbell is distinctly a 
woman's woman. One of her 
strongest passions is ice cream soda. 
She is also fond of chocolate creams 
and she is on record as publicly 
declaring that she much prefers to 
play to an audience of women. 
They understand more quickly and 
are more sympathetic and appre- 
ciative, Mrs. Campbell thinks. 

But her attitude towards her own 
sex has got Mrs. Campbell into 
more or less serious trouble, or, at 
least, annoyance. In the Christ- 
mas number of one of the theatrical 
weeklies she wrote a signed article 



FIGHT FOR SUCCESS. 19 

setting forth her views on the stage 
as a career for young women. 

"Why," asked Mrs. Campbell, 
"should people refer to a young 
woman as 'stage struck'? If she 
wants to be a trained nurse they 
don't call her 'nurse struck.' If 
she decides to be a painter they do 
not call her as 'palette struck.' 
'Stage struck' is an insult to the 
profession. In my opinion no 
career offers as great opportunities 
and as great rewards to a young 
woman as that of an actress — 
always providing that she has tal- 
ent." 

Mrs. Campbell went on to say 
that, in her opinion, young women 
of character and real talent should 
be encouraged to go on the stage. 
The stage needs them and it will 
reward them well, if they have 
ability and are willing to work hard. 

The result of that article has been 
that wherever Henrietta Crosman 
has appeared since every "stage 



20 THROUGH THE STAGE DOOR. 

struck" young woman who has 
heard of her attitude and views has 
first written and then tried to see her. 

If she attempted to see half of the 
dramatic aspirants who are anxious 
to meet her she would have no time 
to do anything else. 

Mrs . Campbell has two sons . One 
of them is at school in New York. 
The other is a little chap of 4 or 5, 
who usually travels with his mother 
under the charge of a nurse. 

She is a domestic woman, so far 
as the necessities of her profession 
will permit her to be. Never once 
during her stage career has she 
ever taken part in one of those 
after-the-show suppers which are so 
popular in and out of the profes- 
sion. When the last curtain has 
gone down she usually is joined by 
her husband and one or two mem- 
bers of her executive staff. More 
often than not she will not take 
her carriage home, but will walk, 
if the distance is not too great, 



FIGHT FOR SUCCESS. 21 

stopping, perhaps, to drink a glass 
of her beloved ice cream soda on the 
way. Her afternoons she devotes 
largely to her son or to reading one 
of the many manuscripts which are 
submitted to her. Mrs. Campbell 
does not believe that an actress can 
do justice to her art and at the same 
time devote much time to society. 



SUPERSTITIONS OF THE STAGE. 

O, I have no patience with 
the people who are super- 
stitious about everything 
they see and meet. There's 



"N 



no reason in the word why actors 
should be any more superstitious 
than any other class of people. As 
for me, I have no more fear of — . 
For heaven's sake, Jim, don't walk 
under that ladder!" 

That bit of quotation from a con- 
versation between two actors fairly 
represents the attitude of the 
stronger minded members of the 
theatrical profession towards the 
multitudinous superstitions which 
rule the stage. As for the average 
actor, he is probably the most 
superstitious person in the world. 
There are a large number of super- 
stitions which are generally believed 
in. In addition almost every actor 
and actress has a lot of individual 
superstitions of his own. 



STAGE SUPERSTITIONS. 23 

Peacock's feathers are always ter- 
ribly unlucky about a theater. 
Even a picture of a peacock's 
feather is enough to ruin the 
chances of a play of an actor. It 
would be hard to convince any 
member of the theatrical profession 
that the real cause of the failure of 
the Lincoln theater, in Chicago, 
was not the fact that in the frieze 
which ran about the inside of the 
house peacock's feathers formed 
one of the chief factors. 

One of the features of the act of 
the Powers brothers in vaudeville 
was the blowing into the air of a 
peacock's feather, which was finally 
allowed to descend and balance on 
the nose of the performer. When 
the Trocadero theatre was first 
opened the Powers brothers were 
on the bill. The manager of the 
house came to a rehearsal and saw 
the peacock's feather blown up 
into the air. Immediately he gave 
a shriek of horror and grabbed the 



24 THROUGH THE STAGE DOOR. 

performer by the arm. "Heavens," 
he said, "do yon want to queer the 
show? Cut out that hoodoo." 
And the feather of ill omen was cut 
out. 

Cats about a theatre are good 
luck. If you meet a black cat on 
the street on the way to an open- 
ing performance you need have no 
further fear. The piece will make 
a great hit. Almost every theater 
in town harbors a pet cat, and it is 
almost a matter of religion with all 
theatrical people never to interfere 
with its pleasure in any way . Often 
when grand opera is on at the Audi- 
torium the theatre cat will take a 
notion to walk across the stage in 
the middle of the scene. But neither 
Melba nor De Reszke would venture 
for anything to stop it, nor would 
they allow a stage hand to inter- 
fere. To interfere with a cat would 
be almost fatal. Everybody who 
knows anything knows that! A 
little one eyed gray cat makes its 



STAGE SUPERSTITIONS. 25 

home back of the stage at the Chi- 
cago opera house. The vaudeville 
performers are simply delighted if 
it takes a notion to come down- 
stairs under the stage and visit 
them in their dressing rooms. If 
it condescends to go to sleep on 
the clothes in their open trunks 
they are tickled half to death. 
That means a long and steady run 
of good luck. Foolish? Why, it 
never fails. They will quote you 
a string of instances as long as your 
arm. Suppose the cat happens to 
go to sleep on the costume you 
wear in your next appearance. 
Wake it up? Not for the world. 
Put on some other clothes, but do 
not disturb the cat. More than 
once a soubrette has gone on in the 
wrong costume rather than rouse 
the cat from its slumbers. 

On the other hand, you must 
never carry a cat with you on the 
road. Traveling. cats are not only 
not harbingers of good luck, but 



26 THROUGH THE STAGE DOOR. 

instances have been known where — . 

When a player on his way to the 
theater to appear in a first perform- 
ance of a new play meets a cross 
eyed man he might as well go back 
home and give it up. He is cer- 
tainly doomed to failure. It never 
•fails. Of course, he should also, 
as soon as he sees the cross eyed 
person, cross the forefinger and the 
middle finger of his right hand and 
spit over them. That may help 
some, but of course it won't take 
the curse off altogether. Nothing 
will do that. 

Some extremely good actresses 
and actors are looked upon as 
Jonahs by theatrical managers. 
Sometimes such unfortunate peo- 
ple have happened to be connected 
with a number of unsuccessful pro- 
ductions. Sometimes there is not 
even that much foundation for the 
reputation they possess. But once 
an actor becomes tainted with the 
hoodoo or Jonah superstition he 



STAGE SUPERSTITIONS. 27 

had better quit the business at once, 
for he will find it practically impos- 
sible to get an engagement. 

"Well," you will hear one man- 
ager saying to another who has just 
put on an unsuccessful production, 
"well, you might have known it! 
Didn't you know better than to 
take out with you?" 

They are talking in dead serious- 
ness, too. 

Certain plays share with certain 
actors the reputation of ill omen. 
There are half a dozen pieces which 
competent judges pronounce ex- 
tremely strong which no manager 
will touch because of it. 

It would be unfair to mention the 
names of any of these hoodoo 
players, though some of them would 
be quite familiar to the public. 

Actors share with the rest of the 
world all the common Friday, thir- 
teen, and umbrella superstitions. 
But they go further than most peo- 
ple in the umbrella line. 



28 THROUGH THE STAGE DOOR. 

Down at the Coliseum gardens 
there were several huge Japanese 
umbrellas used in the decorations. 
One day one of the performers — a 
Frenchman, by the way, as if to 
show that superstitions are inter- 
national—came to Manager Wood 
in great distress. 

"It has rained every day since 
I've been here," he said, "and it'll 
keep on raining just so long as you 
keep those open umbrellas in the 
house. Take 'em out quick before 
you hoodoo the weather for all sum- 
mer." 

When an actor gets home, no 
matter how hard it has been rain- 
ing, he must never open his um- 
brella to let it dry off. That would 
be deadly. Nor must he lay it on 
the bed, even unopened. That 
signifies something terrible. 

Even the unsentimental men who 
handle the business end of travel- 
ing companies have their supersti- 
tions. Always when the doors are 



STAGE SUPERSTITIONS. 29 

open in a small town the men with 
the passes are first in line. But 
they are never allowed to go in till 
there is some money in the house. 
If a single deadhead goes in ahead 
of the people who have bought 
their tickets on the opening night 
of a new production the piece is 
foredoomed to financial failure. 

When your train is pulling into 
a town where you are to show and 
you see a graveyard on the left 
hand side of the train you will play 
to bad business. If the graveyard 
is on the other side of the track it 
don't signify anything in particular. 
Of course if it is on the left hand 
side and you don't see it the sign 
amounts to nothing, so it is wise 
as you run into a town to look out 
of the right hand window or keep 
your eyes inside the car. 

If, when you are setting up the 
canvas on a lot for a circus, a yel- 
low cur dog appears and hangs 
around you'll have doggoned bad 



30 THROUGH THE STAGE DOOR. 

luck. Try it and see if that isn't 
good doctrine. 

You musn't whistle in a stage 
dressing room. You may be a good 
whistler, with a cheerful tune, but 
the first note is likely to drive every 
other actor out into the night. 
There are few better ways to Jonah 
an act. 

Some actors insist that all their 
stage shoes must be kept on the 
floor. If they were put on a table 
or in a cupboard it would ruin 
them. But in some theaters keep- 
ing shoes on the floor is almost as 
bad, for rats like leather and many 
a good pair of shoes has been ruined 
by them. 

Almost every player has some 
little piece of jewelry or wearing 
apparel which is his or her mascot. 
Some people are superstitious about 
an old wig band and will use it 
again and again, having repeated 
new wigs attached to the same old 
band. One actress at the Illinois 



STAGE SUPERSTITIONS. 31 

theatre, in Chicago, was recently 
discovered in tears because some- 
thing had become of her old hare's 
foot with which she applied rouge 
to her cheeks. 

Here are some more bad luck 
signs: A yellow clarionet in the 
orchestra ; to pass through a 
funeral; to pass another actor on 
the stairs; to speak the u tag" — 
that is the last line of a play — at a 
rehearsal ; to look through the hole 
in the curtain to count up the house . 

And after all is there anybody in 
any line of business who has not a 
lot of pet little superstitions of his 
own? 



PHILOSOPHY OF EZRA KENDALL. 

NTIL, he recently started out 
to star in "The Vinegar 
Buyer" Ezra Kendall was 
the most popular and the 



U 



m 



highest paid monologue artist on 
the vaudeville stage. Managers 
were glad to pay him $500 a week 
for twenty minutes of talk twice a 
day. Twenty years ago he was 
working as hostler in a country 
livery stable at $15 a month. Here 
is his own story: 

"I was stranded at a little hotel 
at Portlands ville , N . Y . The land- 
lord of the hotel was Ira Stevens. 
Ira and I were great friends. He 
stuck close to me, because he was 
afraid if he didn't I might jump my 
board bill. Finally he and I struck 
a great idea. 

"Portlandsville is in the center 
of the hop country. They grow 
nothing up there but hops and poli- 
ticians. When the hops get ripe 






EZKA KENDALL. 



EZRA KENDALL. 33 

they have to be picked in a hurry. 
Ten days is the limit. So the hop 
growers go down to New York and 
to all the cities roundabout and hire 
every man they can find to pick 
hops. In the hop picking season 
whole trainloads of hobos are run 
into that country, and every house 
is rilled. 

"Well, Ira and I conceived the 
idea that if we would bring a show 
up there and play through the hop 
country in the hop picking season 
we'd make our everlasting fortunes. 
Ira trusted me for my board bill 
and I went down to the city and 
organized the company. It con- 
sisted of five people. We billed it 
as "The Criterion Comedy Com- 
pany — Four Distinct Entertain- 
ments in One — Variety, Comedy, 
Minstrelsy, and Drama' — and there 
were five of us to carry out the pro- 
gram. One and a quarter people 
to each of the four distinct varie- 
ties. Ira furnished an old bus for 



34 THROUGH THE STAGE DOOR. 

the transportation of the company 
from one little town to the next, 
and an even older wagon in which 
our alleged baggage was carried. 
But after two weeks our scheme 
proved a failure. We found that 
after working hard in the fields all 
day the hop pickers preferred to go 
to a dance, if they went anywhere 
except to bed. 

"I've got enough of the show 
business,' said Ira at the end of the 
second week ; * here's where I quit. ' 

"That left me to get along as 
well as I could. We had a date at 
L,awrence, N. Y., and Ira finally 
agreed to drive us over there. The 
hall where we were to show was 
over the hotel. When we drove up 
to the hotel there wasn't a human 
being in sight. Not a soul in the 
hotel office or on the streets. We 
thought we had struck the deserted 
village for a fact. Pretty soon in 
ran a man in his shirt sleeves, all 
out of breath and covered with mud. 



EZRA KENDALL. 35 

" 'They've got him, "said he to 
me. 

" 'Have they?' I asked. 'Where 
did they catch him?' 

" 'Well,' said the stranger, 'they 
chased him down Main street and 
through Hen Waller's wood lot into 
the barn. Then out of the barn 
and over to the Widow Harlan's 
turnip field. He scart the Bellows 
children half to death and they 
finally ketched him down by his 
own house. His wife grabbed hold 
of his coattail and held on tell the 
sheriff come up.' 

" 'Did he put up a fight? 'I says. 

" 'No,' says my friend. 'Bill's 
harmless, I guess. He just grinned 
at the sheriff and says , ' ' Well , boys , 
I hope you had as much fun as I 
did." ' 

" 'Did they find the goods on 
him?' I asked. 

" 'Huh?' says the stranger. 'The 
goods? Bill's no thief. He's just 
touched in the head . Yesterday he 



36 THROUGH THE STAGE DOOR. 

escaped from the asylum and come 
over here to home and we all have 
been out to catch him.' 

"In afew minutes the sheriff and 
Bill came into the hotel, with about 
200 people after them. Practically 
every inhabitant of the village was 
in the crowd and Bill was laughing 
and joking with them all. 

"Pretty soon it got time for us 
to open our show upstairs. We 
strung the cambric curtain, lit the 
kerosene lamps, and sat the little 
table for the ticket seller near the 
door. But nobody came up and 
bought tickets. The presence of 
the captured Bill down in the hotel 
office was a bigger show than ours. 
Finally I was seized with a brilliant 
idea. I went down stairs and 
invited Bill and the sheriff who had 
him in charge to come up and 
attend our show free of charge. 
That struck both Bill and the sheriff 
as a fine plan, so they came up, and 
almost everybody in town tagged up 



EZRA KENDALL. 37 

after them. Of course, we charged 
everybody but the two chief per- 
sonages a quarter apiece to get in 
and we managed to work up a $15 
house, which was mighty good for 
those days. 

i ' But our audience hardly glanced 
at the stage. They all looked at 
Bill. Bill may have been crazy, 
but he laughed at all the right places 
in the show, and whenever he would 
laugh all the rest of them would 
shake their heads and say, 'Poor 
Bill ! Ain't it too bad he's crazy? ' 

"Finally, at the end of Septem- 
ber, our tour came to a necessary 
end. I had just money enough to 
pay railroad fares for four people 
from the little town we were at 
down to Portlandsville, ten miles 
away . The train left for Portlands- 
ville at noon, and I had just time 
to drive down to Portlandsville and 
borrow some money from my old 
friend , Ira Stevens , proprietor of the 
hotel. With that money I planned 



38 THROUGH THE STAGE DOOR. 

to buy tickets for the five of us and 
meet the other four at the station 
when the train pulled into Port- 
laudsville. The road were bad and 
we had to drive slow. Just as we 
drove into Portlandsville I heard the 
train whistle. I saw I hadn't time 
to see Ira and get the tickets in 
time to catch the train. Sol drove 
straight to the station. I knew the 
ticket agent and he and I were quite 
friendly. I drove up there on a 
gallop just as the train pulled in, 
and said: 'Here, Andy, give me 
two tickets for Albany and two to 
New York. I'm not going and I'll 
see you after the train pulls out.' 

"He handed over the tickets and 
I gave them to the other fourmein- 
bers of the Criterion company 
through the car windows just as 
the wheels started again. Then I 
turned to Andy, the ticket agent. 
'Andy,' I said, 'I'm going up street 
now to borrow some money from 
Ira Stevens, and then I'll be down 



EZRA KENDALL. 39 

and pay you.' 'Ira Stevens!' said 
the agent, with a gasp. 'Why, Ira 
isn't in town. He went away last 
week and he isn't expected back 
for two months yet.' 

"Well, there I was. The train 
was already out of sight, with the 
four people for whom I had 'stood 
off' the station agent for tickets 
safely on board. There was no way 
to get the tickets back — that was 
certain. And if, as the station 
agent said, my friend Ira Stevens, 
the hotel keeper, from whom I 
expected to borrow the money for 
the tickets was out of town for two 
months, I was certainly up against 
it. And so, to an even greater 
extent, was the station agent. He 
had trusted me for $15 worth of 
railroad tickets, for which he would 
have to pay, if I did not find the 
money, and $15 was a lot of money 
for either of us to lose. 

" 'Never mind,' I said to the 
white faced station agent, "I'll get 



40 THROUGH THE STAGE BOOR. 

that money somehow and I'll pay 
you the $15. You just wait and 
see.' 

"Poor fellow. There was noth- 
ing else for him to do, so he waited. 
I drove up to friend Ira's little two- 
storied frame hotel, and found that 
though Ira was not in town the sit- 
uation was not quite as bad as the 
station agent had pictured it. Ira 
would be back in a couple of days. 
So I did a little waiting — at Ira's 
expense . When he got off the train 
and walked over to the hotel a few 
days later I met him at the door 
and told him my tale of woe. 

" 'No,' said Ira, in a way I have 
always thought was unnecessarily 
rough and brutal, 'I'll not lend you 
a cent — not a penny. I should 
think you'd know I had had my fill 
of the show business.' 

" 'Gee,' I said, 'I've got to get 
that money somewhere.' 

" 'Well, go and get it, then,' Ira 
said, with a brutal chuckle. 'Only 



EZRA KENDALL. 41 

you can't work me for it.' That 
gave me an idea. 

11 'Ira,' I said, 'if I can't work 
you, perhaps I can work for you. 
Give me a job. I've got to get that 
money or the New York Central '11 
go into bankruptcy.' 

"Ira said that was more like it. 
He wanted a bartender and he 
wanted a hostler to take charge of 
the hotel stable. Both positions 
were open and he offered me my 
choice of them . It was bar or barn , 
and I chose the stable. The sal- 
ary, I may remark in passing, was 
the same for both positions — $15 a 
month. 

"I went down and explained the 
situation to the station agent and 
assured him I'd pay him his money 
out of the first wages I got. That 
relieved the tension some, but the 
next few weeks that ticket agent 
was around every morning to call 
the roll and see that I was still 
present. 



42 THROUGH THE STAGE DOOR. 

"I worked in that barn, taking 
care of the horses, for two full 
months, during which time I earned 
$30 in wages and as much more in 
tips and in the receipts from a raffle 
I organized to determine which res- 
ident of Portlandsville should 
become the possessor of a large and 
more or less valuable diamond 
stud which was left over from my 
more prosperous days. 

"I have always liked to work 
around horses, and so I enjoyed that 
job as hostler, but I got a lot more 
than enjoyment out of it. There 
was an old fellow named 'Nelse' 
Curry, a horse doctor, in the town, 
who was one of the most original 
characters I ever met. He called 
himself Mulo Medicus on his busi- 
ness cards, and, you remember, I 
used that title later in 'We, Us & 
Co.' 

"Nelse would never admit that 
he didn't know all about anything 
that was being discussed. For 



EZRA KENDALL. 43 

instance, one day I was treating a 
saddle gall on one of the horses in 
the hotel barn. 

" 'Whatyou doiu'?' asked Nelse. 

" 'Cauterizing the wound with 
carbolic acid,' I said. 

" 'That's right,' answered Nelse. 
'Croticise 'er three times a day with 
that there bibolic acid and you'll 
come out O. K.' 

"I cultivated Nelse and some 
more queer old pods who hung 
around the stable, as they always 
do in a small town, and when, after 
a couple of months, I got ready to 
go back to New York , I had a couple 
of books full of notes on their pecu- 
liarities of dress, habits, and lan- 
guage. 

"When I got to New York I was 
pretty nearly broke again, and I 
had hard sledding for a few weeks. 
Just before the holidays I got an 
engagement with the 'Wanted — A 
Partner' company. I was engaged 
to play the part of a countryman. 



44 THROUGH THE STAGE DOOR. 

It was an entirely new role to me, 
but I was fresh from my course of 
study in the barn at Portlandsville 
and thought I could put what I had 
learned to good use. I made an 
impression as a countryman, so 
much of an impression that W. A. 
Mestayer came to me and engaged 
me for a term of three years to play 
that line of parts with his company. 
Mestayer had had a play engaged 
for the next season, but, for some 
reason, it failed to materialize. He 
had, in some way, got a good 
impression of my abilities, so, after 
his playwright had disappointed 
him, he came to me and asked me 
if I thought I could turn out some- 
thing in the play line for him. 

" 'I want to have some fun with 
Hot Springs, Ark., in one act,' he 
said, 'and I've bought the idea of 
a revolving hotel from Bernard for 
another act,' he said. 'And that's 
as far as I've got.' I thought of 
old Nelse Curry up at Portlandsville 



EZRA KENDALL. 45 

and it seemed to me he would make 
a good character. So I told Mes- 
tayer to give me his material and 
I'd see what I could do. I went 
up in the country and worked out 
'We, Us & Co. ' In that play , which 
from a financial standpoint was 
highly successful, my old friend 
Nelse, under his self-given title of 
MuloMedicus, was one of the lead- 
ing characters, and I drew liber- 
ally on my Portlandsville experience 
in many other ways. 

"When we played 'We, Us & Co. ' 
at Albany there was a special train 
run down from the Portlandsville 
country and 'Doc' Nelson Curry 
was on it. He sat in a front seat 
and laughed as heartily as anybody 
at his own antics on the stage. 

" 'We, Us & Co.' cleared up 
$60,000 for Mr. Mestayer. And if 
the story I have told — or any one 
of them — has any point, it is that 
often adversity is a blessing in dis- 
guise . I thought , for instance , that 



46 THROUGH THE STAGE DOOR. 

the two months I spent in that hotel 
barn was a season of mighty hard 
luck, but as a matter of fact it was 
the making of me in my profession. 
There is nothing which can happen 
to a man out of which he cannot 
get a lot of good. I was paid only 
$15 a month for working in the 
stable, but the material I got there 
was worth $60,000 to Mr. Mestayer. 

"I don't believe that often — if 
ever — a really good character or sit- 
uation is evolved out of an author's 
imagination . Almost invariably the 
best of them at least are studied 
from life. 

"My present play, 'The Vinegar 
Buyer,' is based on James Whit- 
comb Riley's poem of 'Jap Miller.' 
I had been trying for a long time 
to get Mr. Riley to write me a play. 
I made several trips to Indianapolis 
to see him. Always he declared 
that he didn't think he could write 
a play. I offered him $5,000 cash 
down as an advance if he would 



EZRA KENDALL. 47 

sign a contract to prepare a play 
for me and a further guarantee that 
his royalties would amount to $15,- 
000 or more within two years. But 
not even that tempted Riley in the 
least. 

" 'I can't write a play, Mr. Ken- 
dall,' he said, 'and I'm not going 
to try.' 

4 'So we fell to talking about some 
of the curious old Indiana charac- 
ters he has celebrated. 

" 'Did you ever read my poem 
of "Jap Miller"?' he asked. 

"I never had, though I was 
familiar with almost everything he 
had written. I found the poem 
extremely suggestive, and told Mr. 
Riley so. He went onto elaborate 
on the character, and in a few min- 
utes I broke in on him: 

"'Mr. Riley,' I said, 'you are 
writing a play this minute, without 
knowing it.' 

"So that's the way 'The Vinegar 
Buyer' came into being." 



ADVENTURES OF THE THEATRICAL 
PRESS AGENT. 



#>& 



ONTRARY to public opin- 
ion the theatrical press 
agent is personally a mod- 
est man. He is willing to 
go to almost any length in exploit- 
ing the actress or actor he repre- 
sents, but when it comes to per- 
sonal publicity he becomes a sen- 
sitive plant — a shrinking wood 
violet. He will talk? Yes. But 
it must be behind the screen of 
anonymity. 

In the old days the w T ork of the 
theatrical press agent was to call 
on the editor of the country paper 
and invite him out to take a drink 
or several drinks — the more the 
better. Incidentally, he was ex- 
pected to tell how his star had 
just got a divorce from her hus- 
band, or, if he represented a mas- 
culine star, how his principal was 
involved in as many scandals as 




MRS. "PAT" CAMPBELL. 

SEE PACE 53. 



THE PRESS AGENT. 49 

possible. If he was a particularly 
ingenious press agent he told how 
the actress had just had a lot of 
non-existent diamonds stolen. 

Now all this is changed. Even 
the title has been given up. The 
man who now looks after the press 
work for a big theatrical production 
is called the business manager, not 
because he has much to do with 
the business management, but for 
the reason that with the increased 
dignity of the profession has come 
a disinclination to even suggest that 
they are in any way dependent on 
the gullibility of press or public. 

And, as a matter of fact, it is an 
axiom in the show business that no 
matter how ingenious the press 
agent may be it is altogether im- 
possible for him to boom a bad star 
or a poor play into lasting popular- 
ity. Clever press work may, and 
often does, greatly help a good but 
obscure player, but it never yet 
made a permanent success of an 



50 THROUGH THE STAGE DOOR. 

incompetent. In theatrical press 
work as in all other forms of adver- 
tising publicity amounts to nothing 
unless you can really "deliver the 
goods." • 

Nowadays a press agent's value 
depends not so much on his inge- 
nuity as on his good judgment. 
Plenty of things which the news- 
papers are glad to print do much 
more harm than good to a theatri- 
cal enterprise. For instance: 

A few years ago the Victoria the- 
ater, nowthe New American, opened 
on North Clark street, in Chicago. 
A new hand was hired as press 
agent and was urged by the man- 
agement to get up a sensation which 
the newspapers would print the 
morning after the opening. It hap- 
pened that what the press agent 
considered agood sensation actually 
occurred the day before the open- 
ing. The leading woman of the 
company was traveling on a rail- 
road train through Iowa on her way 



THE PRESS AGENT. 51 

to open the Victoria. In the car 
with her three people were discov- 
ered who had well developed cases 
of smallpox. Everybody in the car 
was captured at a station just across 
the Mississippi and taken to a pest- 
house. The leading woman climbed 
out of a window, walked for five 
miles through the woods, and 
caught a train which brought her 
to Chicago in time to make her 
appearance, as announced. She 
had not even been vaccinated or 
disinfected. 

The leading woman told her story 
to the new press agent. It struck 
him as "a corking good story." 
He got the picture of the leading 
woman and a vivid interview with 
her, describing the horrors of the 
pesthouse from which she had 
escaped. Every paper in Chicago 
printed something about it and the 
new press agent imagined that his 
fortune was made. He went to the 
manager's office early the morning 



52 THROUGH THE STAGE DOOR. 

the stories were printed. He 
thought the manager would meet 
him with open arms and probably 
at least hint at a raise in his salary. 
On the contrary, he was met with 
a cold and formal letter informing 
him that his services were no longer 
needed. He knows better now. 

As an example of the microscopic 
pains which are taken to avoid 
alarming the patrons of a theater 
in this way the following incident 
is told: 

When Miss Julia Marlowe was 
playing in New York during a small- 
pox scare there, the danger of con- 
tracting the disease was minified by 
the newspapers, but the great the- 
ater going public was quite badly 
frightened. When the scare was 
at its height the manager of the 
company, whose business it is to 
keep in close touch with public 
sentiment, went to Miss Marlowe 
and asked her to temporarily cut 
one line from the play. When the 



THE PRESS AGENT. 53 

reasons for the request were given 
to her she complied at once. This 
was the line which was elided: 

"Does he think he'll get the 
plague from me?" 

' ' There isn 't any use in even run- 
ning a chance of suggesting an 
unpleasant thought to the public," 
said the wise manager, and Miss 
Marlowe agreed with him. 

Among the press agents of the 
present day in the United States 
the leader is probably a keen and 
ingenious person who rejoices in 
the unusual name of A. Toxin 
Worm. To the profession Herr 
Worm — for he is by birth a German 
— is known as Anti-Toxin Worm. 
It was he who was responsible for 
the unique press work which put 
the name of Mrs. "Pat" Campbell 
in the mouths of everybody during 
her recent visit to America. He 
was quick to see the possibilities of 
Mrs. Campbell's little pet dog. 
Hundreds of other actresses have 



54 THROUGH THE STAGE DOOR. 

had pets quite as interesting, but 
certainly no other dog was so 
quickly made historic as was Pinky 
Panky Po. Even in coining a 
name for the miserable little beast 
Herr Worm showed positive genius. 
It was Worm also who, when his 
star was playing at the Republic 
theater, in New York, had load after 
load of tanbark dumped on the 
streets surrounding the building, 
and then, when the work was done, 
quietly disappeared. Forthwith 
came the dramatic reporters inquir- 
ing anxiously the reason for this 
strange proceeding. Bach of them 
was referred to Mr. Worm. Mr. 
Worm was hard to find. Once 
found, he was reluctant to "give 
up." Finally he told the story. 
Mrs. Campbell was extremely nerv- 
ous. The noise on the streets 
annoyed her greatly. He had had 
the tanbark put down so that she 
might not be disturbed while act- 
ing. Newspapers all over the coun- 



THE PRESS AGENT. 55 

try printed stories about it. Mr. 
Worm also ingeniously invented the 
tales about Mrs. Pat's enormous 
winning at bridge whist. He was 
shrewd enough to see that a story 
of that class would interest a large 
class of people. 

But the press agent must see to 
it that he does not "overplay his 
star." It is easy to give him or 
her too much publicity of a sensa- 
tional kind. At once the line of 
safety is passed the effect is deadly. 
It is said that no less a personage 
than Richard Mansfield, entirely 
without his wish, has had so much 
notoriety of this kind that the reac- 
tion is being felt at the box office. 
The public has read so many tales 
about the great actor's ungovern- 
able temper that it has got tired of 
it all. 



HOW E. H. SOTHERN REHEARSES 
HAMLET. 



"~~| N the first place, Mr. Edward 

H. Sothern takes himself and 

his art seriously — even at a 

_ rehearsal. And when Ham- 
let is the subject of a rehearsal it 
is easy to see how any lightness 
might kill the whole tragic effect. 

The curtain was down at Powers' 
theater, to stop the draft on the 
stage, and behind it the men and 
women who are to present the trag- 
edy were busy, in their street 
clothes, going through the duel 
scene. 

King Claudius held his regal state 
sitting on a kitchen chair and dis- 
tinguished from the other players 
by the golden, gem set crown that 
looked sadly out of place in con- 
nection with a standing linen col- 
lar and a sack suit of clothes. Out 
in front, close to the blank curtain, 
stood young Hamlet and Laertes — 



E. H. SOTHERN. 57 

Mr. Sothern and the other player 
— both in dark, short coats. Out 
to them tripped the young Osric, 
swaggering with his arms full of 
foils. Strangely looked the young 
blade, cavorting in trousers and 
jacket. 

"Set me the stoups of wine upon 
that table," orders the king, rising 
in majestic poise on his pine board 
throne. 

The page — a most modern young 
woman in a street dress — bows low 
as she fills and presents the golden 
bowl. 

Then the duelists fall to. 

"No," says Sothern to Laertes, 
"on the second stroke you must 
aim higher. Else I cannot touch 
you with my foil naturally." 

They go through it again. Sud- 
denly Sothern stops and looks 
around him. All about the edge 
of the stage are sitting the soldiers 
and the women who were to come 
on later . Some of them had on their 



58 THROUGH THE STAGE DOOR. 

overcoats and wraps. They were 
gathered into little groups and 
were whispering softly among them- 
selves. 

"I must ask," said Hamlet, be- 
coming suddenly B. H. Sothern 
and much in earnest in that part, 
"I must ask that the whispering 
stop. You can't have anything 
important to say that can't wait. 
If you have, go out of the theater 
or down stairs, or anywhere, and 
say it. Then come back. But we 
can ' t rehearse with that ' s-s-s-s-s-s ' 
sounding in our ears all the time. 
It gets on a man's nerves; it takes 
him out of the part he is trying to 
play; it is simply damnable. I 
don't want to be aggravating about 
it, but I won't have it." 

Thereafter the lofty lines rang 
out in utter silence; not a sound 
broke into the solemn scene when 
the queen drank the poisoned cup ; 
the dying L,aertes told his tale of 
treachery to a hushed house and the 



E. H. SOTHERN. 59 

audience of one, sitting up in the 
flies, out of sight, was thrilled with 
the tragedy of it all, forgetting 
coats, trousers, and tailor made 
gowns and the total lack of courtly 
surroundings. 

"I make it a rule," said Mr. 
Sothern, "not to allow spectators 
at my rehearsals. The presence of 
a critic or two sitting down in front 
in an otherwise empty house has a 
bad effect on every actor. It takes 
him outside his part and makes 
him self-conscious. He feels that 
he has not yet perfected his work 
and he is wondering, as he reads 
his lines, what so-and-so out there 
in front thinks of it . You can ' t get 
a man's best efforts — you can't get 
him to throw his whole soul into 
the work of rehearsal — when he 
knows he is being watched. Un- 
consciously he resents the idea of 
being inspected and criticised be- 
fore he has reached, as nearly as 
he can, the stage of perfection. 



60 THROUGH THE STAGE DOOR. 

1 'It's the same way with a painter. 
I studied art in my early days and 
I know what the effect was when 
a casual visitor to the gallery where 
I was copying a picture stopped 
and looked at my uncompleted 
sketch. It simply threw me out of 
the spirit of the thing and often I 
would; fail to get the effect I was 
aiming at until another day. 

1 'For the same reason I am accus- 
tomed to rehearse my own parts 
all alone in an empty theater, after 
audience, company, and stagehands 
have all gone home for the night. 
There is something inspiring and 
compelling to me in the very 
emptiness of a great theater, just 
as there is the emptiness of a great 
cathedral. And I can give myself 
to the work of expressing the 
thought of the dramatist at such a 
time without reserve and without 
any feeling that I am being watched 
and criticised. Another reason why 
I think it best not to allow specta- 



E. H. SOTHKRN. 61 

tors at rehearsals is that it is some- 
times necessary for a producing star 
to make suggestions to the mem- 
bers of his company; sometimes, 
in the heat of the moment, he may 
even grow a bit sarcastic and rebuke 
one member or another for some 
unnecessary lapse. And the actor, 
being a grownup man, does not at 
all enjoy being rebuked in the pres- 
ence of other people." 



WILLIAM GILLETTE-PLAYWRIGHT, 
ACTOR. 



AST season for more than 
one hundred consecutive 
nights there were no less 
than sixteen different actors 
playing the part of "Sherlock 
Holmes" in different parts of the 
world, with William Gillette, 
author of the play and creator of 
the part, serving as model for 
them all. 

There were five companies play- 
ing in England, two in the United 
States, two in Australia, two in 
South Africa, and one each in 
Copenhagen, Amsterdam, Buda- 
Pesth, Moscow, Brussels, and the 
country districts of Belgium. It 
is stated that so far as the number 
of different companies which are 
producing it at the same time is 
concerned "Sherlock Holmes" 
has broken all previous records, 
the best heretofore being that of 



WILLIAM GILLETTE. 63 

"Pinafore," which was presented 
by twelve companies at the same 
time. 

Each of the actors who is pre- 
senting the character of the detec- 
tive had the advantage of studying 
Mr. Gillette in the part during his 
long stay in London. Most of 
them imitate him in makeup and 
methods, and, whether it is pro- 
duced in Rus ian, in French, in 
Danish, in German, or in Nor- 
wegian, the spell of the tense sit- 
uations of the play holds the 
audience as closely as it does in 
English with its creator in the 
title role. 

Sherlock has not yet been pre- 
sented either in France or Ger- 
many, but will be during the next 
year or two. In France before a 
foreign play can be presented it is 
necessary to employ a recognized 
member of the society of dramatic 
authors to make the translation 
and " stand for" the production. 



64 THROUGH THE STAGE DOOR. 

To him a certain amount of cash 
must be paid in the way of royal- 
ties, and there are many other 
technicalities to be complied with 
which make it necessary, or at 
least advisable, for the principal 
to be on the ground. 

Everywhere he goes Mr. Gillette 
takes with him his little working 
table on which his plays are writ- 
ten. He usually has something 
new under way and spends a part 
of many days, en route, at his 
literary work. 

The table itself resembles noth- 
ing so much as one of the old 
fashioned sewing tables with fold- 
ing legs. Every morning his Jap- 
anese valet covers the top of the 
table with a fresh sheet of clean 
white paper, fastened with thumb 
tacks underneath the top. There 
is also laid out daily a fresh sup- 
ply of clean steel pens, blotters, 
and paper. Unless when he sits 
down everything about the work- 




E. H. SOTHERX. 

SEE PACE 56. 



WILLIAM GILLETTE. 65 

ing table is fresh and spotless the 
actor-author finds it hard to do his 
work . 

Nowadays Gillette does not often 
get back to his little place in South 
Carolina— "The Thousand Pines" 
— which he built on the top of a 
mountain fourteen miles from a 
railroad. That little place was 
built when the world looked dark 
to him. He had, shortly before, 
collaborated over the writing of a 
play which was a complete failure 
— the only failure he has made in 
the play line — and family bereave- 
ments had completely crushed him. 
He went down into the wilderness 
of the South Carolina mountain 
country and built the bungalow with 
the idea of spending the remainder 
of his life there as a hermit. Cer- 
tainly no spot could be more per- 
fectly adapted for that method of 
life. The only neighbors which 
"The Thousand Pines" can boast 
of are most of them engaged in the 



66 THROUGH THE STAGE DOOR. 

manufacture of illicit whisky. Gil- 
lette made friends with many of 
them and added to his knowledge 
of human nature that of this strange 
and remarkable type. While he 
lived at "The Thousand Pines" 
Gillette did his own cooking, and 
his chief amusement was to walk 
ten miles over the mountains to the 
nearest village, where a couple of 
hundred mountaineers made their 
homes. He staid in the mountain 
fastness long enough to fight out 
the battle with himself and he 
emerged strengthened and invigor- 
ated in every way. 

Long before he became an actor 
his desire to study and to know 
human nature in all its types led 
him to undertake even stranger 
journeys and more startling changes 
of character. The story of how, 
during one of his long vacations 
from college, he went out west and 
gjpt a job as an apprentice in a 
machine shop, so that he might 



WILLIAM GILLETTE. 67 

study the workingman at first hand, 
is familiar. Most people know 
also that the house of his father in 
Hartford, Conn., is next door to 
the old home of Mark Twain, and 
that the humorist put Gillette on 
the stage as a member of the stock 
company at the Boston museum. 
Now Twain declares that the joke 
he thought he was putting up on 
Gillette is about the only one he 
ever tried that didn't come out the 
way he expected. 

But there is one of Gillette's early 
experiences which is not so well 
known and which illustrates how 
far his desire to know men at first 
hand carried him. It also hap- 
pened during one of his long vaca- 
tions from college. At that time 
he was especially anxious to study 
men and women who were affected 
by different diseases and to learn 
how they acted in such circum- 
stances. Accordingly, he left home, 
and with no warrant but his own 



68 THROUGH THE STAGE DOOR. 

assurance actually hung out his 
shingle as a physician in a small 
town in Ohio. It should be said 
in his favor, however, that he did 
not unduly trifle with the health of 
his patients. The only medicine 
he ever gave was bread pills, and 
when people seemed to be really 
ill he sent them to some regular 
practitioner for treatment . Things 
were going along well with the 
young doctor-student. He was 
building up something of a prac- 
tice and was curing almost the 
average percentage of cases with 
his bread pills when envious rivals 
or the board of health got after him 
for practicing without a physician's 
license. Then his father was 
obliged to come to his aid, and 
finally, after Gillette had proved 
that he never gave any medicine 
but bread pills and had produced a 
number of people he had cured in 
that way, the case w T as compro- 
mised. But he went away with a 



WILLIAM GILLETTE. 69 

pretty extensive and comprehensive 
knowledge of the way sick people 
act and talk. 

The special car on which Gillette 
and his company traveled last sea- 
son was usually attached to the end 
of a regular passenger train. Down 
among the Indiana sand hills some- 
thing happened to the coupling 
apparatus and the special car broke 
loose from the train. The rest of 
the train got a quarter of a mile 
away before the absence of the 
special was noticed. Then it backed 
up and an attempt was made to 
replace the coupling. But part of 
the coupling apparatus was broken 
and the pin itself was lost. The 
flagman and the brakeman made a 
fruitless search to find something 
to take its place. Finally one of 
them was sent back to the nearest 
station, several miles to the rear, 
to get something for that purpose. 
Meanwhile, Gillette had become 
aroused. As the brakeman walked 



70 THROUGH THE STAGE DOOR. 

away on his long errand, Gillette 
came out on the rear platform, and, 
with true Sherlock Holmes omni- 
science, reached up on the roof of 
the special car and took down a 
duplicate of the missing part. 

"I happened to see it lying up 
there this afternoon , " he said . And 
the trainmen are all wishing they 
could have a Sherlock aboard all 
the time in case of emergencies. 

The great ambition of Mr. Gil- 
lette is to make a memorable suc- 
cess of his coming production of 
"Hamlet." 

The scenery, costumes, and prop- 
erties for "Hamlet" are almost 
all under way, and many of them 
have been completed, though if Mr. 
Gillette has any surprises in store 
he is keeping them a careful secret. 
Practically none of the people who 
will take part in the production have 
been engaged. Rarely, if ever, 
can Gillette be persuaded to play 
a longer season than twenty-five 



WILIJAM GILLETTE. 71 

weeks. He is not physically an 
especially strong man, and finds it 
necessary to take great care of his 
health and not to overwork. 



E 

ITT 



DUSE, THE MYSTERIOUS. 

LENORA DUSE, the famous 
Italian actress, is one of the 
mysteries of the stage. She 
shuns publicity — and gets as 
much of it as any actress in the 
world . She refuses herself to inter- 
viewers — and sends ahead of her 
one of the most accomplished press 
agents in the business. She declares 
that the public has no concern with 
her life off the stage — and the news- 
papers are full of stories of her early 
struggles as a barefooted, wander- 
ing child actress in the villages of 
Italy, and of her more recent expe- 
riences with the tender passion. 
She owns a splendid collection of 
jewels — and wears no jewelry on or 
off the stage. She is said to loathe 
her art — and managers fight for con- 
tracts with her for years to come. 
She declares ambition is a grisly 
phantom — and her own ambition 
has led her to take more than one 



DUSE, THE MYSTERIOUS. 73 

sensational revenge on those who 
have slighted her. 

Is it all a pose? Does the Italian 
tragedienne wrap herself in a man- 
tle of mystery and put the redoubt- 
able Mme. Schmidt on guard at 
her door because she knows that 
attitude will only whet the public 
curiosity? Even her managers do 
not profess to know. They are 
amply satisfied with the result. 
And they point out that she must 
be given credit for entire consist- 
ency in her attitude towards the 
public outside of the theater. She 
goes so far as to pay absolutely no 
attention to anything that may be 
printed about her private life. She 
will not even take the trouble to 
deny a story which, on its face, is 
not plausible. Her pose is one 
of complete indifference. So the 
guileless press agent may print what 
he pleases without fear that his star 
will find fault or deny it. The play- 
bills say that Duse is thirty-two 



74 THROUGH THE STAGE DOOR. 

years old. As a matter of fact 
she is at least thirty-six. She has 
been on the stage a quarter of a 
century, beginning when she was 
twelve years old. She was born 
in a little Italian village, Vigerano, 
in northern Italy, on the border 
line between Piedmont and Lom- 
bardy. Luigi Duse, her grand- 
father, was an obscure Italian actor, 
who played a line of small legit- 
imate parts in the minor Italian 
cities. Her father was known on 
the peninsula as "Sor" Duse, and 
is best remembered as once having 
established an unsuccessful theater 
at Padua. In her infancy her 
parents were members of several 
different bands of "strolling play- 
ers." They wandered through 
Italy, and played as chance would 
have it — in inn yards, restaurants, 
sheds, anywhere. 

Here is a story which throws 
some light on her childhood : Duse 
was playing in Vienna . Already she 



DUSE, THE MYSTERIOUS. 75 

was famous. She had refused many 
invitations to social entertainments 
in her honor. Finally one came 
from an Italian nobleman connected 
with the Italian embassy to Aus- 
tria. For once Duse broke her rule 
and accepted it. At the reception 
all the guests save one came for- 
ward to do homage to the actress. 
The exception was a young girl, 
who stood apart and watched Duse 
with eager eyes. Finally she ap- 
proached and timidly touched Sig- 
nora Duse's hand. The actress 
questioned the girl and learned that 
she was the daughter of her host. 
On the following Tuesday about 
midnight, when Signora Duse was 
about to retire, a servant knocked 
at her door. U A lady to see the 
signora," the servant announced. 
"Her name?" 
4 'She refuses to give it." 
' 'What does she seem to be? ' ' 
"I cannot say, signora. She is 
closely veiled." 



76 THROUGH THE STAGE DOOR. 

Signora Duse ordered the caller 
to be shown in. A black robed 
figure entered the room. The ser- 
vant retired. Then the caller threw 
aside her veil and the daughter of 
the diplomat knelt at the feet of the 
actress. 

"My poor child," said Duse, as 
she raised her to her feet. "What 
is the matter?" 

"The girl told her why she had 
come. Her home was happy. But 
she yearned to be famous. She 
wanted to be a great actress. 

"Take me with you," pleaded 
the girl. 

"That is impossible," answered 
Duse. 

"Then I shall kill myself." 

Duse led the excited child to a 
seat. 

"Once," said the actress, "there 
was a poor girl — so poor that she 
was always barefooted and often 
went the whole day without food. 
But she felt a spirit stirring within 



DUSE, THE MYSTERIOUS. 11 

her — which kept crying out to her, 
'Courage! ' 

"In summer and winter, in plenty 
and in starvation, she heard the 
voice crying: 'Courage! You will 
be great.' 

"Years went by — years of priva- 
tion and suffering, and awful toil. 
Then the skies grew clearer. The 
girl's name got into the mouths of 
men. It spread until all Italy took 
it up. She was petted and caressed. 
She was truly great." 

"How beautiful," cried the girl. 

' ' Beautiful , ' ' replied the actress . 
"My child, that woman sits before 
you . She would give all her great- 
ness to be a happy child like you." 

"But fame is happiness," cried 
the girl. 

"Fame is a phantom," said the 
actress . ' ' You are far happier than 
I can ever hope to be." 

The girl wept, and Duse, calling 
her carriage, drove her back to her 
home. 



78 THROUGH THE STAGE DOOR. 

Three nights later, in Berlin, a 
courier handed a letter to Signora 
Duse. It contained a letter: 

"Signor: My daughter has no 
secrets from me. I know all and 
bless you. I send you a token, 
priceless in itself, doubly priceless 
now; a token that a Medici is hence- 
forth a father to you." 

The letter was unsigned , but Duse 
knew from whom it came. It con- 
tained a gold band ring, set with 
six opals in the form of a double 
oval. That ring has never left the 
ringer of Duse since that time. 

That is a sample of what the free 
and untrammeled press agent can 
do. Duse will never either deny 
or affirm it. And the doubter has 
only to look at the ring, as he will 
see it on the finger of the actress. 

Schurman, Duse's present man- 
ager, was once manager for Sarah 
Bernhardt. He has had the man- 
agement of the Italian tragedienne 
for the last two years. 



DUSE, THE MYSTERIOUS. 79 

"L,ast winter," says Mr. Schur- 
man, "Duse was playing at Stutt- 
gart . William II , king of Wurtem- 
burg, was one of the enthusiastic 
spectators in the audience. The 
play was 'Magda,' and after the 
third act the monarch sent for Sig- 
nora Duse's impresario. 

' ' 'You will tell Mme. Duse, ' said 
the king, graciously, 'that I am 
profoundly impressed by her per- 
formance. I shall give myself the 
honor of visiting her in her dress- 
ing room immediately.' " 

Schurman, who has a French 
manner a Prussian beard, expressed 
his thanks and hurried back to his 
star's dressing room to give her 
warning. He nervously conveyed 
through the keyhole the royal com- 
pliments and the further intelli- 
gence that the actress was to be 
honored by a visit from the king. 

"You tell his majesty, ' ' she said 
to her manager, opening the door 
of her dressing room and appear- 



80 THROUGH THE STAGE DOOR. 

ing fully dressed, "that I am grate- 
ful for his compliment and flattered 
by his attention. But tell him I 
feel just as much honored by hear- 
ing it from you. Tell him I cannot 
see him because I am dressing." 

Then the king was heard ap- 
proaching. Before her manager 
had finished whispering the fact to 
Duse the door of her dressing room 
was closed. The important fact 
that his majesty was waiting was 
communicated through the keyhole . 
The answer came back from Duse 
that she was dressing and could see 
nobody. 

"Then I'll wait," answered the 
Suabian ruler, blandly. 

"If you do, you'll have to wait 
outside as long as I stay inside, 
your majesty, ' ' was Duse's answer, 
as her manager reports it, "for I 
shall not come out while you are 
there." 

The king held the curtain for half 
an hour in vain. Then he went 




ELKNORA DUSE. 

SEE PACE 72. 



DUSE, THE MYSTERIOUS. 81 

sadly back to the royal box. And 
Duse had won a new fame as the 
only actress who ever gave a ruling 
monarch the snub direct. 

Duse has signed contracts to ap- 
pear in this country next year. She 
is beginning to show considerable 
interest in the United States. So 
far on this trip she has not slapped 
a persistent interviewer, which is 
an indication that she is getting 
used to American methods. It is 
said of her that she has a long 
memory. More than one manager 
who slighted her in the days of her 
struggles has come to her since, 
hat in hand, and done his best to 
get a contract. But she does not 
forget, and to not one of those who 
once frowned on her early efforts 
has the signora ever given a hear- 
ing. 



WILLIAM H. CRANE TELLS STAGE 
STORIES. 



«1 



WAS about to suggest, Mr. 
Crane, that—" 

"That reminds me of a 
little interchange of cour- 
tesies which took place between 
Barry Sullivan, the great En- 
glish actor, and Manager Buck- 
ley, of the Baldwin theater in San 
Francisco, on the opening of that 
house by Sullivan's company. I 
was a member of the company and 
was standing on the stage the after- 
noon before the opening, when the 
dialogue between the two occurred. 
Buckley was a pompous and con- 
ceited man, and Sullivan took a 
great dislike to him from the start. 
"'This,' said Buckley, looking 
around the beautiful house and 
speaking in a most patronizing 
manner, 4s the third theater I have 
opened.' Then he stopped and 
looked at Sullivan to see what effect 



WIXUAM H. CRANE. 83 

the announcement would have on 
him. But Sullivan looked him 
straight in the eyes. 

" 'Indeed, sir,' said Sullivan, 'and 
how many have you closed? ' ' ' 

"Mr. Crane, will you — " 

c ' Tell you about ' Jimmy ' Powers ? 
Why, I called on 'Jimmy' one after- 
noon and asked him to go over town 
with me to a rehearsal or some- 
thing. 

"'Can't,' said 'Jimmy.' 'I'm 
sorry, but I've got to take a sing- 
ing lesson this afternoon.' 

" 'What with, Jimmy?' I asked, 
and he didn't speak to me for six 
months." 

"And, Mr. Crane— " 

"Yes. Hogue's barber shop in 
the old days was patronized by all 
the big politicians and heavy weight 
financiers in New York . One morn- 
ing Lawrence Barrett walked in 
there for a shave. 

"Finally a chair was vacated by 
a fine looking old man, and Barrett 



84 THROUGH THE STAGE DOOR. 

slipped in. The barber was one of 
those talkative chaps that keep their 
tongues running faster than their 
razors. 

" 'Did you notice that gentleman 
who just got out of my chair?' he 
asked, as he tucked a towel about 
the great Barrett's neck. 

" 'Yes, I noticed him,' said the 
tragedian, in a deep bass voice, 'and 
I'm in a great hurry this morning.' 

" 'Yes, sir,' went on the barber. 
'All right, sir. As I was saying, 
it's a funny thing about that gen- 
tleman. The minute I put my 
hands on his head, I said to him, 
"Excuse me, sir. Aren't you in 
the law, sir?" "Yes," he said, 
"I'm in the law." "High up in 
the law, sir?" "I'm Justice Brown, 
of the Supreme Court of the United 
States," he said. 'Well, sir, I 
don't know how it is,' went on the 
barber, 'just a gift I have, I sup- 
pose, but the minute I lay hands 
on a man's head I can tell his occu- 



WILLIAM H. CRANE. 85 

pation. Only yesterday I picked 
out the governor of Connecticut 
that way and — ' 

"By this time Barrett was getting 
a little interested. 

1 ' 'Perhaps, ' said the great trage- 
dian, 'perhaps you can tell me my 
profession?' 

" 'Just a minute, sir,' said the 
barber, 'just a minute.' 

"Rapidly he ran his hands over 
Barretts 's Jovian locks and across 
his splendid forehead. Then he 
leaned over with a confident grin. 

" 'Shoe store,' he said. 

"Now, Mr. Crane, about — " 

"Well, in the old days of the 
Hooley stock company, in Chicago, 
of which I was a member, there 
was a young actor came along whose 
stage name was William H. Wild- 
ing. He had had a good commer- 
cial training before he started in 
with us to become an actor, and 
sometimes he used to ask me for 
advice. He played the court clerk 



86 THROUGH THE STAGE DOOR. 

in the trial scene in the 'Merchant 
of Venice' and that sort of small 
parts. I told him I often thought 
him foolish to give up business, in 
which he had a fair start, for such 
an uncertain thing as the career of 
an actor. 

" 'To be frank with you,' I said 
to him one night, 'I don't think 
you are fitted to become a great 
actor. You seem to lack the dra- 
matic instinct, and without it you 
won't go far. My candid advice to 
you is to go back into business and 
to stick to it.' 

' 'The next day Wilding went out 
and hustled for a job in a store. 
He got a clerkship which paid him 
$15 a week. He had been getting 
$25 in the stock company, but he 
gave that up at once and went into 
vulgar trade. When he left the 
stage he gave up also his stage 
name of William H. Wilding and 
took his own name of John K. 
Mockett. 



WILLIAM H. CRANE. 87 

"The other day I stopped over 
in Toledo, O., for a few hours, and 
went up to call on Mockett. He 
is now the owner of the largest and 
most successful clothing and fur- 
nishing store in Toledo, and one 
of the largest in the State. The 
name of Mockett is well known in 
trade circles. And whenever I see 
the man whom I put out of the the- 
atrical business he renews his thanks 
for my part in the change, which 
he has never regretted since he 
made it." 

"Mr. Crane, David—" 

"That was one man I helped to 
get out of the show business. 
Frank — Francis- — Wilson is one 
whom I advised to stick to it and 
to leave black face for something 
more legitimate. When I first met 
Wilson he was playing in a black 
face sketch called 'Wash Day, ' with 
his partner, the firm being Cronin 
& Wilson, But even then Frank 
Wilson was an energetic and am- 



88 THROUGH THE STAGE DOOR. 

bitious man. In his leisure time, 
when most actors would have been 
idling, or worse, he was studying 
French, German, and the law. He 
and I had a good many talks, and 
I advised him to try legitimate 
comedy parts. So he gave up $75 
a week in negro minstrelsy and 
took a position with the Chestnut 
Street theater, in Philadelphia, to 
play second comedy parts in the 
stock company at $25 a week. 
Then McCall came along and put 
him into light opera, where he has 
been ever since." 



"Well, here's a letter from an 
Iowa man who would like to know 
if I shouldn't love to be playing 
Shakespeare ' s ' Two Dromios ' again 
with Stuart Robson . I should think 
not. Why , all the time I was on the 
stage I was bound foot, hand, and 
tongue. If Robson had a cold in 
his head I had to have a cold in 
mine. If Robson had a felon on 



WILLIAM H. CRANE. 89 

the little finger of his right hand 
it was necessary for me to rig one 
up. If he got the rheumatism and 
had to wrap up his knee in a red 
flannel bandage I had to do the 
same. It was dreadful. I had to 
think of Robson's other things all 
the time. Sometimes I'd get all 
made up and ready to go. Then 
I'd drop into Rob's dressing room 
for a minute and observe that he 
had put a little more red paint than 
usual on his cheeks and nose. 
Then I had to hurry back to do the 
same thing. It was a dreadful 
experience." 



"Yes, Harum seems to be going 
finely again this year. Some of the 
critics say it is likely to be a sec- 
ond 'Rip Van Winkle.' I shouldn't 
object to that. But I have pro- 
duced more new plays than any 
actor now on the stage. Getting 
a good play is harder every year. 
Some time ago a well known dra- 



90 THROUGH THE STAGE DOOR. 

matist read rne a scenario that told 
a beautiful story. It was just what 
I wanted. I accepted it and ordered 
the play, paying him $2,500 as 
advance money. A month later 
he brought me around the first act 
to read. It was based on an en- 
tirely different scenario, and I told 
him so. 

11 'Why, this isn't on the lines of 
the scenario you showed me,' I 
said. 

" 'No, I know it,' he said, 'but 
it's a great deal better.' 

"I didn't like it at all. A week 
later he called again. This time 
he wanted to borrow $50. I let 
him have it, of course, and he left 
a receipt for it. This is the way 
the receipt read, as I discovered 
after he had left: 

" 'Received of W. H. Crane $50, 
to be repaid out of the first royal- 
ties received on the play I am 
writing for him.' That's the last 
I have ever heard from him. I 



WILLIAM H. CRANE. 91 

suppose he simply needed the $2,- 
500 in his business." 

Mr. Crane's dresser handed him 
a realistic rubber mole, which he 
proceeded to paste on to the griz- 
zled and wrinkled cheek of David 
Harum. 

"The last boy I had is in state's 
prison now. Stole $1,800 and ran 
away. But that didn't hurt so 
much as what I learned afterwards. 
It seems the boy had been spend- 
ing my money and my clothes and 
raising merry Cain in half the towns 
we visited. 

"'Aren't you afraid that Mr. 
Crane '11 find you out?" some one 
asked him. 

11 'No, 'he said. 'You can't fool 
Mrs. Crane. But Crane — why, 
Crane's easy.' 

"And that really did hurt." 



A CHICAGO TRAGEDY OF HAMLET. 

N the closing day of his last 

engagement in Chicaga in 

' 'Lazarre,' ' Otis Skinner 

played to a matinee "of $1,- 



O 



618," as the box office puts it. In 
the evening the receipts were even 
larger. But the time is not far dis- 
tant when Mr. Skinner was glad to 
take in as much in a week as his 
average daily receipts are at pres- 
ent. 

In January, 1896, for instance, 
the Skinner company, then, as 
now, under the management of 
Joseph Buckley, was playing the 
little towns along the Ohio river in 
Kentucky in a round of romantic 
dramas. It kept Buckley fairly 
busy in those days to meet the pay 
roll and provide sufficient funds to 
buy railroad tickets from one little 
town to another. 

It happened that in January, 
1896, Chicago was enjoying a per- 



TRAGEDY OF HAMLET. 93 

feet epidemic of Shakespeare's 
"Hamlet. ' ' For the week of Jan- 
uary 26th Walker Whiteside was 
announced to present the great 
tragedy at the Schiller. The next 
week Creston Clarke was to present 
the melancholy Dane at McVick- 
er's. Within a few weeks the 
famous Italian actor, Salvini, the 
younger, was underlined in the same 
play at the Schiller. 

For the week of January 26th at 
the Grand opera house it had been 
announced that Mme. Modjeska 
would appear. But a day or two 
before her opening Modjeska fell 
ill and was obliged to telegraph 
Manager Hamlin, of the Grand, 
canceling her engagement. 

Mr. Hamlin immediately can- 
vassed the list of available attrac- 
tions to fill in the vacant two 
weeks. Finally it occurred to him 
that Otis Skinner would be a draw- 
ing card. He got into communi- 
cation with Mr. Buckley at Padu- 



94 THROUGH THE STAGE DOOR. 

cah, Ky., and offered the Skinner 
company a good thing if it would 
cancel its time in Kentucky and 
come up to Chicago for the fort- 
night. 

"Yes," said Mr. Buckley, some- 
what embarrassed at the situation 
which confronted him, "we would 
like to come to Chicago first class, 
but it is several hundred miles dis- 
tant from Paducah." 

Which was Mr. Buckley's deli- 
cate way of hinting that he did not 
have the ready money to buy the 
necessary railroad tickets. That 
essential matter was arranged by 
Mr. Hamlin's advancing the funds 
by telegraph, and Otis Skinner and 
his fellow players took the first train 
for Chicago. 

At the time everybody in the 
theatrical line in the city was talk- 
ing about the Hamlet craze. Walker 
Whiteside opened at the Schiller 
in the Shakespearean play and all 
the critics said it was "a creditable 



TRAGEDY OF HAMLET. 95 

production," which is their way of 
avoiding the saying of something 
worse. At any rate, the Whiteside 
production represented the invest- 
ment of a large sum of money. The 
scenery and the costumes were fine, 
and the lines were given' ' a thought- 
ful and intelligent reading." 

Skinner opened at the Grand in 
one of his stock plays to only fair 
business. That night Mr. Hamlin 
asked him if he had ever played 
Hamlet. 

Yes, he had played Hamlet once, 
before the students of the Univer- 
sity of Wisconsin. But he had no 
costumes, no scenery, no proper- 
ties. 

Well , play it again , here and now . 
Never mind scenery or costumes or 
other incidentals. Do the best you 
can . The people want ' * Hamlet . ' ' 
We must give it to them. 

Forthwith began the greatest 
hustle on record for scenery and 
costumes which could be forced into 



96 THROUGH THE STAGE DOOR. 

service. For the graveyard scene 
the only thing that could be found 
was a back drop which had been 
left behind by a company playing 
"The Texas Steer." It was a gar- 
den scene with a statue of U. S. 
Grant in the center. Of course, it 
was necessary to cover up that 
statue, so a group of stage trees 
was arranged in front of it, which 
hid the monument from everybody 
except the people in the left hand 
boxes and those who occupied seats 
on that side of the house. 

A costume for Hamlet was found 
at the shop of a local dealer who 
makes a specialty of supplying the 
wants of masqueraders. All sorts 
of similar shifts were turned and, 
finally, a day or two later, the first 
performance of "Hamlet" by "the 
eminent Shakespearean actor, Otis 
Skinner," was announced. 

The night of the first improvised 
performance the house was fairly 
filled. But the critics went almost 




KYRLK BELLE W AND MRS. JAMES 

SEE PACE 113 



BROWN PUTTEE, 



TRAGEDY OF HAMLET. 97 

into ecstasies over Skinner's read- 
ing of the lines, and everybody 
who had been present must have 
talked to his friends about the 
superlative merit of the perform- 
ance. The second night of "Ham- 
let" every seat was filled. The 
praise grew stronger. "The great- 
est Hamlet since Booth has been 
discovered," said the critics, all 
in one breath. Meanwhile the 
astonished success of Skinner had 
had a bad effect on the attendance 
at the Schiller. After three nights 
of "Hamlet," Walker Whiteside 
gave it up and turned to other plays 
in his repertoire, in which the com- 
parison was not so strong. 

Skinner turned into the second 
week with the Sunday papers full 
of his remarkable performance. 
Public interest was heightened by 
the announcementinthe same issues 
that Creston Clarke would open 
that week at McVicker'sin "Ham- 
let," the inference being that now 



98 THROUGH THE STAGE DOOR. 

the theater-going people of Chicago 
would see the "real thing" in the 
line of Shakespeare . Clarke ' s good 
angel had provided him with suffi- 
cient funds to make an elaborate 
production and plenty of scenery 
and costumes had been arranged 
for. It was a case of "wait for the 
big show." 

But Clarke did not ' ' make good . ' ' 
His engagement at McVicker's was 
for two weeks, but at the end of the 
first seven days the remainder of 
the time was canceled, and Clarke 
disappeared, for the time at least, 
from metropolitan theaters. 

Meanwhile, the crowds and the 
enthusiasm aroused by the Skinner 
portrayal increased. When he put 
on something else the audiences at 
the Grand were not so large, but 
every performance of "Hamlet" 
packed the house. It was a suffi- 
cient answer for all time to the 
claim that people do "not care for 
Shakespeare." 



TRAGEDY OF HAMLET. 99 

Finally, after the other three 
Hamlets had closed their engage- 
ments, but while the excitement 
engendered by the rivalry was still 
fresh in the public mind, along 
came the great Salvini the younger. 
He was jealous of the fame won by 
Skinner in the part of Hamlet, or, 
at least, he was determined that he 
would surpass it. 

On Monday night he opened to 
a big house at the Schiller in the 
great tragic part. On Tuesday 
night the audience was much 
smaller. On Wednesday evening, 
with "Hamlet" still the bill, there 
was a beggarly house. Salvini 's 
manager overrode the entreaties of 
his star and took "Hamlet" off for 
the rest of the engagement, substi- 
tuting other plays in the Italian's 
repertoire. 

Salvini was broken hearted. He 
fought the determination to with- 
draw "Hamlet" as bitterly as he 
could, and it was only after an 

FLofC. 



100 THROUGH THE STAGE DOOR. 

almost pathetic scene between him 
and his manager that the determi- 
nation was arrived at. After that, 
and during the remainder of his 
engagement, Salvini's acting 
seemed to lack its accustomed fire 
and spirit. He took the success of 
Skinner in the one part he wanted 
to play most keenly to heart. He 
could talk of nothing else. In 
talking over the matter with Mr. 
Buckley he actually broke down and 
wept bitterly, raving against the 
theater-going people of Chicago, 
denouncing the critics, and speak- 
ing bitterly of the action of his own 
manager. 

But there was nothing to be done 
about it. The test had been made, 
and, under the most difficult and 
embarrassing circumstances. Skin- 
ner had won the verdict. Salvini 
left Chicago a thoroughly crushed 
and disappointed man. 

Not long after his Chicago expe- 
rience Salvini gave up his career in 



TRAGEDY OF HAMLET. 101 

America and went back to the home 
of his father in Italy. He never 
seemed to fully recover his ambi- 
tion and spirit, and within a few 
months after reaching his old home 
he died of an obscure disease. 

As for Skinner, Mr. Buckley, his 
manager, made an effort to interest 
rich men in an undertaking to send 
his star out in a splendid revival of 
"Hamlet," but he failed to get the 
money and, though the tragedy was 
produced during that season on the 
road and with almost unfailing suc- 
cess, it was never especially feat- 
ured. 

So, by what was a mere chance 
of the theatrical business, one 
famous actor was sent home broken 
hearted, to die soon after, while 
the rising stars of two other young 
tragedians were apparently pertna- 
manently obscured. And this by 
a man who played "Hamlet" be- 
fore scenery stolen from "A Texas 
Steer," and who wore a costume 



102 THROUGH THE STAGE DOOR. 

rented by the week from the shop 
of a dealer in ready-made disguises 
for masqueraders. 



THE MAKING OF AN OPERA STAR. 
GOOD many years ago, when 
"Tom" Prior was running a 
comic opera company at the 
old Schiller theater, in Chi- 
cago, a young girl came up to the 
city from a hamlet on the banks of 
the Wabash in Indiana. Her father 
was a church deacon in the Indiana 
village and his daughter came up 
to Chicago to study music. She 
brought with her, as chief assets, 
a lot of ambition and an extremely 
promising voice. 

This was some time before the 
Indiana artistic and literary move- 
ment set in, and the Hoosier with 
soulful longings was naturally 
looked upon with some degree of 
suspicion. But when Manager Prior 
heard the girl sing — her real name 
was Gracie Quivey — he engaged her 
to sing in the chorus of "The Black 
Hussar. ' ' So she wrote home that 
she was getting along finely; that 



104 THROUGH THE STAGE DOOR. 

she already had secured a per- 
manent position which would pay 
her expenses while she was study- 
ing music — though, to be sure, she 
did not go into details as to just 
what her position was. 

It may be that Papa Quivey took 
it for granted that his daughter 
was singing in a church choir, 
though certainly his little girl never 
willfully deceived him in this regard . 
When Gracie went on the stage she 
followed tradition and made a slight 
change in her ancestral Scotch 
name. She left off the terminal 
"y" and became for artistic pur- 
poses Miss Gracia Quive, which cer- 
tainly sounds comic opery. 

Inside of two weeks she had 
advanced in her profession to the 
front row. Then two important 
things happened. The first in point 
of time was a visit paid to the 
Schiller theater by a casual way- 
farer from Miss Quive 's home town 
in Indiana. As is customary with 



AN OPERA STAR. 105 

visitors from the rural districts, he 
sat as far down in front as was 
humanly possible. When the 
jaunty chorus came swinging out 
on to the stage the gentleman from 
Indiana gave one look at the front 
row and almost had a fit. There 
in extremely abbreviated skirts 
stood little Gracie Quivey, whom 
he had often taken to sleighing par- 
ties and barn dances in the old home 
town. Right after the first act the 
Hoosier made his escape and caught 
a train for home. He had a piece 
of news that was altogether too 
good to keep . He knew something 
that would set the village gossips 
afire. Before breakfast next morn- 
ing he went over to tell his next 
door neighbor, and his wife started 
out, without stopping to wash the 
breakfast dishes, to spread the glad 
tidings. 

" 'Si' was up there to Chicago 
and went to one of them opry shows 
and seen Deacon Quivey's Grace 



106 THROUGH THE STAGE DOOR. 

standing right out onto the stage 
with pink tights on." 

Before noon "Pa" Quivey him- 
self had heard of it, and, horrified 
and scandalized at the thought, he 
hurried to Chicago on the first train. 

Then fate stepped in again. The 
day that "Pa" Quivey arrived in 
town the prima donna of the opera 
company suddenly made up her 
imperious mind that she was going 
back to New York, and, without 
stopping to do more than draw a 
week's salary in advance, she 
jumped on board a train. 

Manager Prior heard of his star's 
desertion along in the middle of the 
afternoon. He was in despair. He 
called the company together and 
canvassed its members for a possi- 
ble substitute, there being no reg- 
ular understudy for the prima donna. 

It developed that Gracia Quive 
was the only woman in the cast 
who was at all familiar with the 
songs and music of the leading 



AN OPERA STAR. 107 

role. But she did not know the 
words of the spoken dialogue. 
Prior was desperate, for he had had 
a good advance sale. 

"Well," he said, "you'll have 
to go on, Miss Quive, and do the 
best you can with the part. I'll 
put a man with a prompt book on 
each side of the stage and you'll 
have to wing the part so far as the 
words go." 

As aforesaid, Miss Quive was 
even then an extremely ambitious 
young person, and she determined 
to do her best to make a hit in the 
star role, or at least to play it so 
well that she would be kept in the 
part. She sat down in the stage 
at once and studied straight ahead 
until time for the evening perform- 
ance, without even stopping to eat 
dinner. An hour before the cur- 
tain her old father found his way 
back to the stage door and finally 
got in to see his daughter. He was 
furious at the humiliation he con- 



108 THROUGH THE STAGB DOOR. 

sidered his daughter had cast upon 
him and absolutely refused to allow 
her to go on the stage again. 

But Manager Prior finally suc- 
ceeded in persuading him to let her 
go on for that night only. As 
might have been expected, Miss 
Quive was badly rattled when she 
made her appearance. She knew 
nothing of the lines, in the first 
place; she was jumping straight 
from the chorus to a star part ; and, 
last of all, he angry old father, of 
whom she was dreadfully afraid, 
was waiting to take her home. 

Will J. Davis, the well known 
manager, happened to occupy a 
stage box that night. He saw 
plainly that the new star was hav- 
ing a hard time of it. He heard 
the prompters bawling at her from 
both sides of the stage. But he was 
at the same time struck with the 
quality of her voice, and he made 
a note of her name for future refer- 
ence. 



AN OPERA STAR. 109 

Next morning early her father 
took her back home to Indiana, and 
Miss Gracia Quive's retirement 
from the stage appeared to be com- 
plete. 

Six months later a well known 
vocal teacher called on Mr. Davis 
to interest him in the education 
and future of a young woman 
singer. Gracia Quivey — with the 
"y" back again in its place — was 
her name. Mr. Davis remembered, 
and presently he was able to get 
her a place to sing in a church 
choir out at Oak Park. There she 
sang on Sundays all the time she 
was having her voice trained during 
the week. 

Perhaps a year later the Boston- 
ians were going to try voices in New 
York. The idea was to get some 
fresh, new voices of promise in their 
chorus. Miss Quive went down 
with a note of introduction from Mr. 
Davis. Out of forty voices heard 
on that occasion hers was the only 



110 THROUGH THE STAGE DOOR. 

one that passed the critical exam- 
ination, and a little later Miss Quive 
joined the Bostonians. She made 
rapid progess in the company and 
seemed well on the way to the top, 
when something else happened. 

Dr. Van Studdiford, of St. Louis, 
a young man of wealth and social 
position, fell in love with the singer 
and persuaded her to leave the 
stage and become his wife. Then 
followed a few years of retirement 
from professional life, during which 
Mrs. Van Studdiford enjoyed all 
the advantages which money could 
give her. 

Then came financial disaster and 
in a few months most of the Van 
Studdiford money had completely 
vanished. But Mrs. Van Studdiford 
still had her voice, and her ambi- 
tion to make a notable place for 
herself on the operatic stage had 
only grown stronger during her 
retirement. She found a good posi- 
tion at once and without difficulty. 



AN OPERA STAR. Ill 

For a few months she was with an 
opera company, which she left be- 
cause other members of the com- 
pany found fault when her friends 
in St. Louis sent quantities of flow- 
ers over the footlights to her when 
a St. Louis date was played. Part 
of one season she was under 
engagement with the Castle Square 
opera company, though illness kept 
her to her room for months and 
prevented her from appearing until 
the season was almost over. 

Mrs. Van Studdiford has taken a 
whirl around the vaudeville circle 
in company with some of her old 
colleagues in the Bostonians. She 
played the round of the continuous 
houses in Chicago and went through 
to the coast on the Orpheum cir- 
cuit. 

Last season she was back again 
with the reorganized Bostonians. 

They say that before a singer or 
a musician of any kind can show 
true feeling in his work he must 



112 THROUGH THE STAGE DOOR. 

have known most of the deeper 
emotions to which humanity is 
heir, and those who have heard 
Mrs. Van Studdiford sing since she 
returned to the stage profess to find 
in her voice the softening and 
broadening effects of her more recent 
experiences. 

She has recently signed a con- 
tract with a prominent manager by 
the terms of which she will appear 
this year as a star at the head of 
an opera company of her own. She 
will make her debut in a stellar role 
in a new opera, for which Victor 
Herbert, who has made something 
of a study of Mrs. Van Studdiford's 
capabilities, is now writing the 
music. 







MRS, VAN STUDDIFORD. 

SEE PAGE 103. 



THE HANDSOMEST MAN ON THE 
STAGE. 



K 



YRLE BELLE W, who is 

illustrating the way in which 
a gentleman of France runs 
a dozen villains through 
with his trusty rapier before break- 
fast, has been more different things 
in the course of his career than the 
most versatile of his contempora- 
ries. 

It is a question whether he is 
better known as an actor or a gold 
mine owner and mining engineer. 
Besides he has been a sign painter, 
a sailor before the mast, an Aus- 
tralian "sundowner" or tramp, and 
a dime museum lecturer. Just now 
he has blossomed out as an author. 
His book — ' ' Stray Stories of a Stage 
Nomad" — has already been pub- 
lished in London, and is shortly to 
be issued by the Appletons in this 
country. And in this book Mr. 
Bellew tells such tales of his own 



114 THROUGH THE STAGE DOOR. 

experiences that his friends in the 
theatrical business are urging him 
to dramatize his own life the next 
time he is at a loss for a romantic 
and sensational drama. To this 
proposition Mr. Belle w objects on 
the grounds that the public is tired 
of lurid melodrama, and that every- 
body would say that it was too im- 
probable, anyway. 

When Bellew was in London the 
last time a woman brought him her 
autograph book to write in. He 
turned the pages till he came to 
the leaf on which H. Beerbohm 
Tree had left his mark. 

" 'Tis I— Hamlet, the Dane— 
H. Beerbohm Tree," was what the 
English actor had written. Bellew 
took his pen and wrote on the same 
page and immediately beneath Mr. 
Tree's contribution another quota- 
tion. " 'Tis true, 'tis pity; and 
pity 'tis true — Kyrle Bellew," was 
the sarcastic inscription; which is 
a fairly typical example of how much 



KYRLE BELLEW. 115 

actors love one another. Mr. Bel- 
lew's first experience in the Aus- 
tralian gold fields was a good many 
years ago. He had made consider- 
able progress and was in a fair way 
to become a mining millionaire 
when suddenly the experimental 
government of the antipodes passed 
a law declaring that thereafter it 
should not be lawful to employ the 
labor of the black natives of the 
islands in mines of any kind. That 
put Bellew out of business almost 
at a sweep. He struggled along 
until his money was all gone. Then 
he turned the water into his mines, 
flooded them, and set out to find 
something to do. He had hard 
work finding it — such hard work 
that he finally became what the 
Australians call a "sundowner," 
which is the same thing as a tramp 
in this country . He ' ' panhandled ' ' 
his way through the scrub, begging 
for food at the back doors of ranch 
houses, until he finally struck Mel- 



116 THROUGH THE STAGE DOOR. 

bourne. There he made the rounds 
looking for work . Finally the land- 
lord of a little tavern expressed a 
mild desire to have a sign painted 
on the front of his inn, and Bellew, 
by declaring that he was an artist 
by trade, got the job. He painted 
a huge white lion all across the 
front of the hotel, and it made such 
a hit with landlord and guests alike 
that ever since then "The White 
Lion" has been a favorite title for 
Australian inns. For some weeks 
Bellew did a rushing business in 
the painting of white lions, and 
when he had finally plastered the 
fronts of a majority of the houses 
of entertainment in the vicinity with 
the insignia he turned to something 
else. 

First he visited the local wax 
works' show and there, by an exhi- 
bition of great fluency and elo- 
quence, obtained a situation as 
official lecturer. A little later he 
was wandering along the docks one 



KYRLE BEIXEW. 117 

day when some one asked if he 
knew anything about boats. 

"Boats," replied Belle w. "Why, 
I'm a sailor by trade." 

As a matter of fact, he had sailed 
before the mast for several years, 
and he did know a great deal about 
the subject. So he was employed, 
in company with another "sun- 
downer" to build a flat bottom boat. 
It is one of Mr. Bellew 's boasts 
that the boat was so well built that 
it is still running on the waters of 
an Australian stream. 

But the question of how to get 
back to England was still staring 
Bellew in the face. It was solved 
when, after long searching, he got 
a berth as third mate on a sailing 
ship that was bound f or Liverpool . 
It was on his return to his mother- 
land that Mr. Bellew first went on 
the stage. He spent five years on 
the stage in London — part of the 
time with Sir Henry Irving — and 
then he came over to serve as lead- 



118 THROUGH THE STAGE DOOR. 

ing man in a New York theater. 
His original contract was for one 
year, but he made such a hit that 
it was five years before he was 
released. 

Then began his connection with 
Cora Potter — Mrs. James Brown 
Potter — which lasted for more than 
ten years, and during the course of 
which the two traveled, with their 
company, to almost every corner of 
the civilized world. 

Mr. Bellew's last appearance in 
this country, before the present 
engagement, was seven or eight 
years ago, when he and Mrs. Pot- 
ter and their company presented 
"Charlotte Corday" and other 
plays in Chicago and through the 
"States." 

Three or four times Bellew has 
gone back and had a try at the gold 
mines, near May town, which he 
still owns in partnership with Frank 
Gardner, the famous Anglo-Amer- 
ican mining millionaire, who has 



KYRLK BELLEW. 119 

for many years lived in London and 
Paris. Enough has been done in 
the development of the mines to 
demonstrate to the satisfaction of 
the owners that they have a huge 
fortune waiting for them to dig it 
out of the earth. Only the other 
day Mr. Bellew received word from 
Gardner that the stock of a com- 
pany which has been organized to 
develop three of their Maytown 
mines has been floated on the Lon- 
don market and almost any time 
Bellew is expecting to wake up and 
find himself a multi-millionaire. 

All these years, while he has 
been appearing on the stage, Mr. 
Bellew has kept up an active inter- 
est as a mining engineer from the 
New Zealand School of Mines, 
which is recognized as one of the 
best institutions of its kind in the 
world. During his recent stay in 
New York Mr. Bellew lectured be- 
fore the students at the school of 
mines connected with Columbia 



120 THROUGH THE STAGE DOOR. 

University, which he regards as the 
finest school of its kind in the 
world, and it is anticipated that 
before long he will take the exam- 
inations for the degree of M. E. 
from the New York school. High 
as are his abilities as an actor it is 
admitted that he could earn a 
splendid living as a mining expert 
at any time. 

His partner, Frank Gardner, is 
an American by birth, and has made 
millions out of mines in both Aus- 
tralia and South Africa. 

How old is Kyrle Bellew? 

The World Almanac says he was 
born in London in 1845, which 
would make him now 58 years old. 
Mr. Bellew himself, it is under- 
stood, confesses to 48. Some of 
his friends are willing to raise the 
ante to 51. 

At any rate no one seeing him 
on the stage would imagine that he 
was on the shady side of 40. And 
he still retains to a large degree 



KYRLE BELLEW. 121 

that handsome profile and distin- 
guished bearing which have made 
for him for at least twenty years 
one of the most prominent of the 
great army of matinee idols. 

As a matter of fact, Mr. Bellew 
is at present a reformed matinee 
idol, if he was ever anything else. 
Women, young and beautiful, still 
send him notes and locks of their 
hair. Sometimes they actually fol- 
low him about the country from 
city to city. But it is all in vain. 
He has no answering smile for any 
of the fair ones. Apparently he is 
devoted to the memory or to the 
affection of some mysterious and 
unknown lady. 

Personally, his habits are exem- 
plary. He is in bed half an hour 
after the last curtain falls on the 
' ' Gentleman of France . " He does 
not drink, nor even smoke. Which 
is one reason why, whatever his 
age may be, he still looks like a 
man of 35. 



122 THROUGH THE STAGE DOOR. 

Born in Eondon, the son of a 
priest of the church of England, 
Kyrle Bellew was educated at Ox- 
ford. After the death of his father 
his mother married Lord Elgin, who 
was later the viceroy of India, 
which explains why, when Bellew 
and Mrs. Potter went to India on 
their trip around the world, they 
were received in the highest cir- 
cles and made a tremendous suc- 
cess, financially and otherwise. 
And now, at the conclusion of his 
present contract to appear as a star 
for three years, he expects to set- 
tle down as an Australian mining 
millionaire in the great city of his 
birth. 



HOW DAVID BELASCO WORKS AND 
LIVES. 



<n 



OW life may inspire high 
art." "You must scratch 
your way through a moun- 
tain to success." "Liter- 
ature is easy; life is hard." 

"There is nothing so complicated 
as simplicity." 

"When as a boy of ten years I 
recited ' Curfew Shall Not Ring 
To-night' I saw in my mind's eye 
Mrs. Carter playing 'The Heart of 
Maryland.' " 

"The first money I ever made I 
made by selling badges of General 
Grant on the streets. With that 
$18 I bought two stage wigs. The 
playwright is born, not made." 

"You must feel before you can 
philosophize." 

"Nobody can write a book on 
playwriting that is worth reading, ' ' 

"The death agonies of a person 
poisoned by strychnine are different 



124 THROUGH THE STAGE DOOR. 

from those produced by arsenic. I 
am afraid of death, but have studied 
them both from life." 

"When I write a play I live a 
play." 

With two soft boiled eggs, timed 
to three minutes, a pot of break- 
fast tea, and some toast before him, 
David Belasco sat at a little table 
in his room, attired in pale blue 
pajamas, and said: "Really, I'm 
a poor talker. ' ' 

Then he proceeded in the course 
of twenty minutes' talk to give 
expression to some scores of epi- 
grams, of which those quoted above 
are samples, as the traveling man 
says. 

After getting his star well started, 
he left for New York. But nobody 
with one of Belasco 's attractions 
knows when he'll get back. 

As likely as not he will come 
back unannounced. Without say- 
ing a word to any one, he will slip 
into the theater at the evening per- 



DAVID BELASCO. 125 

formance and watch the whole show 
to see whether everybody is keep- 
ing up to the mark. If there is 
any "let down" a rehearsal will be 
called, and the "governor" will 
bring the people who have begun 
to slight their work to a realizing 
sense of what he wants. If, on the 
occasion of one of these unexpected 
visits, he finds everything going 
just as he likes he may take the 
morning train back to New York, 
and nobody will be the wiser for 
his visit. 

"I believe first of all in simplic- 
ity. Rounded periods are all very 
well in books, but you don't often 
find them in real life. What a per- 
son will do under a certain set of 
circumstances depends altogether 
on the person. 

"You can tell one man suddenly 
that his mother or his wife is dead, 
and he will break out into sobs, 
tear his hair, and act like a mad- 
man. You bring the same message 



126 THROUGH THE STAGE DOOR. 

to another man, and he will stiffen 
himself, keep perfectly quiet, and 
only show his emotion by lowering 
his voice and clenching his fists. 

"Repose may be high art; so 
may hysteria. It depends on the 
temperament of the character you 
are portraying. Either may be 
false; either may be true. Some 
people have an idea that the high- 
est art is always reposeful and 
quiet. They are wrong. It would 
be as untrue as unartistic to make 
some characters self-controlled and 
silent as it would be to represent 
a noiseless thunder storm or an im- 
movable earthquake. 

"Before I had enough money to 
hire a stenographer I used to write 
the dialogues of my plays seated 
before a mirror. On the desk be- 
fore me I had a pad of paper and 
pencil. First I was one of the 
characters and then another, and 
what I felt I wrote down, using a 
kind of shorthand, so that my hand 



DAVID BELASCO. 127 

might keep up with my changing 
feelings. 

"All art is the better for being 
felt before it is expressed. No 
woman, for instance, can play the 
part of a mother on the stage with 
the highest art of which she is capa- 
ble until she has actually been a 
mother and experienced the emo- 
tions she attempts to portray. 

"Now I have a couple of ste- 
nographers when I am working on 
a play, but I must always act the 
play as I go along. I get the first 
idea for a play in many different 
ways. I have trained myself to 
observe men and women. Some- 
time I see something which con- 
tains the germ of a play ; sometimes 
I read somethingin the newspapers 
which appeals to me ; sometimes it 
is a bit of history which strikes me; 
often I find myself going back to 
some experience of my boyhood 
days. I was an adventuresome and 
curious boy. I was always peering 



128 THROUGH THE STAGE DOOR. 

into forbidden places. I ran away 
with a circus ; I visited a gambling 
house; I went to the morgue; I 
hung around police stations. Now 
I see the unconscious reason for it 
all. I was gathering material for 
the plays I was to write. 

"Believe me, there is no such 
thing as a method of playwriting. 
One must live and then put what 
he has lived into the mouths of his 
actors. 

"Often the theater-going public 
is made to suffer for the sins or for 
the shortcomings of theatrical man- 
agers. There is no such thing as 
a public craze for a certain kind of 
theatrical entertainment. A good, 
a first-class, true production of any 
kind or type is always sure of its 
hearing. It is most often manage- 
rial or dramatic inability which hides 
the cheap excuse of a public craze. 
The sincere and able artist, be he 
tragedian or what not , may always be 
sure of his hearing and of success. 



PRINTED BY COMMERCIAL PRINTING CO. 
IOO EIGHTH STREET, CAIRO, 11,1.. 



JUL 17 1903 




Til s 
rill 

THE 

STAGE 

DnnR 










m$& a gs %^ Kps gn 8 

tItI] Ut 

a» ^»> A jgp jjSL jw£ 



